Behind the Decision

The Colby Experience Begins

hnbui@colby.edu (Hung Bui) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 03:26:41 GMT

There was a palpable sense of electricity in the air – an excitement and an anticipation of new beginnings. Students were flying from 34 countries around the world arriving into the nearby Portland and Bangor International Airports. Approximately another 450 students from across America had packed their belongings, hugged warm wishes to their childhood and high school friends, and turned their gaze north. The morning was sunny, clear, and warm. Mother Nature too was assisting in creating the appropriate focus. The sky was Colby Blue. It was not a day for the neck-choked ties and the long-sleeve dress shirts fit for the corporate world. It was a day to put away the socks. This moment was for the t-shirt, hiking short, and the well-worn sandal. Sedans, hatchbacks, mini-vans, and all form of vehicles were fully loaded with clothes, pillowcases, towels, and all the seemingly necessary college room accessories. Brightly colored balloons adorned the paths and clearly marked signs were directing the proper route through orientation. The Community Advisors in charge of each residence hall were warmly greeting, our Deans and Faculty were dispensing their sage advice, and roommates were greeting each other for the first time. The 193rd Colby College class had arrived on Mayflower Hill. Welcome to your Colby Experience.

Summer On Mayflower Hill

hnbui@colby.edu (Hung Bui) — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 03:21:48 GMT

The summer months are fleeting on Mayflower Hill. Only a few short days after we graduate the Class Of 2010 do we begin to see the glimpses of the Class of 2015, as prospective students begin arriving at Lunder House, home of the Colby College Admissions Office. One would think that with the end of the academic calendar, and the students’ departure for summer vacation that colleges mostly wind down. Colby remains an active, vibrant community throughout the summer. The college hosts a varied series of summer programs. During the summer, the college is home to the Atlantic Music Festival, The Great Books Institute, and a medical examiner forensics seminar; just to list a few. We are also host to a range of sports camps from soccer to basketball to rowing.

By early June, Lunder House becomes a hub of activity. This past summer we had approximately 1500 visitors sign our guest book and stroll along approximately 300 separate campus tours. We accommodated 900 interview requests. Students visited from as far away as the Kingdom of Bahrain and as near as Skowhegan, Maine this summer. Free from the rigors of the high school year, students and their families routinely schedule summer visits to Mayflower Hill. Some families are able to plan a vacation around the Colby visit and are able to enjoy all the natural beauty that Maine offers. Then there is the “warrior class” of student visitor, who plans the summer college tour as if they were a business traveler attempting to accrue frequent flyer miles. I interviewed a student this summer who visited 12 colleges in 5 days! At the heart of a quality and comprehensive Colby admissions visit is the campus tour, information session, and the college interview.

The campus tour and the information session provide distinct perspectives of Colby. Your guide will accompany you across the lawns, the classrooms, dining halls, residence hall quadrangles, and even a glimpse of a dorm room. You will be able to see Colby through the lens of a current student. The information session complements the campus tour in which a Colby Admissions Counselor can provide information on the wide range of educational and social offerings available to a Colby student. We can answer your questions about applying to Colby and address any concerns that you may have about any aspect of the college admissions process which, at times, may be quite daunting.

The interview is a wonderful opportunity for the student to personalize the admissions process. As admissions counselors, we visit with new students and families on a daily basis. Through the course of the admissions cycle, we will meet with thousands of prospective candidates. We try our very best to imprint mental snapshots, take copious notes, and maintain well-organized files, but admittedly, it is hard to remember every single person. The interview allows us to put a name with a smiling face. We look forward to getting to know a prospective candidate and to chatting about your academic interests and activities that are fun and important to you. We very much believe that you are more than your grades or your standardized test scores. You should seize upon the opportunity to share with us elements of your personality or areas of interests that may not be obvious on the application. An overwhelming number of interviews are warm, vivid conversations serving to enhance your Colby application.

The calendar marks September 21 as the last day of summer. Classes are back in session. High school seniors are hoping to enjoy their moment, but with an eye towards college. For the Colby Admissions team, it marks the beginning of fall travel. We embark on travels across America and to most corners of the globe. Internationally, our passports will receive stamps from Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Mostar, Duino, New Dehli, London, Llantwit Major, Victoria, and quite a few more cities. We will travel across America to Boston, Charlotte, Miami, Dallas, Houston, St. Louis, Chicago, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and many more. Contact us to see when we will arrive at a city near your home. I hope to see you on the road!

It's Official

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 19:37:04 GMT

In theory, yesterday, July 14, was my last day at Colby. In my usual fashion, however, I haven't quite tied up all the loose ends to my satisfaction so I will be going in for one more day next week to finish things off. But meanwhile, today is the first day of my new job, in a way. I am on the way to Boston to the annual meeting of the Overseas Association for College Admission Counseling, one of a number of professional organizations to which I belong. When I pick up my name badge, though, it will say Munich International School rather than Colby College. I'm nostalgic about leaving Colby behind but I'm finally getting excited about the move.

My final responsibility at Colby was actually a great transition to my new job. I was in charge of hosting an overnight visit on campus of 36 high school counselors from international schools on five continents. This was great fun in lots of ways since it was a return to my roots (I was a high school counselor myself for almost 20 years before coming to Colby six years ago, including a couple of years overseas). The best part was the dinner on Tuesday night, to which I had invited 12 of the students who are on campus this summer doing various jobs, including academic research with professors in many disciplines. There were only two of us there from Admissions, my colleague Sandra Sohne Johnston and me, and we sat by ourselves at a small table listening in on all the great conversations going on around us. The energy in the room was awesome, and our students were their typical warm, smart, energetic and personable selves. I walked out of that room on a cloud of pride for the college that I've represented for six years and for our terrific students.

After a full morning of activities on campus, the counselors boarded their bus yesterday just before noon to head for the next college on their itinerary. Their parting comments were full of compliments about Colby and our students. There is tremendous value for college counselors to visit campuses and talk to students so that they can better convey the flavor of colleges to their own students; I remember this well from my own days on the high school side. Hosting this group at Colby made me excited about going back to “the other side” and especially for another taste of the international life.

So this is my last post to “Behind the Decision” (although I would not rule out a guest post once in a while). I am glad to say that the blog will go on, although it will take three people to replace me (!). My colleagues Judy Brody, Hung Bui and Steve Thomas will he alternating posts, and I know you'll enjoy reading their observations from Lunder House.

Auf Wiedersehen!

Transitions

dstreett@colby.edu (Dorothy Streett) — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 18:56:29 GMT

The weeks following commencement are a quieter time in Lunder House. The Wait List activity is over and the Class of 2014 is in place. Most high schools, especially in the Northeast, are in session well into June so the traffic in the admissions office is quite light. Our regular cadre of students who lead tours, answer phones and help in various capacities within the office is dispersed to summer internships or jobs at home and out in the Real World. Our group of summer student workers, now known as Admissions Interns, is in place, but because the office isn't very busy, there are only two or three working at the moment; their numbers will increase as the summer gets busier.

On campus, things look very different. To the visitors who come to us in Lunder House, the atmosphere seems very quiet, but in fact there are loads of different groups cycling through Colby all summer long. The regulars are professional development seminars for physicians (notably in orthopedics and opthalmology) and sports camps of all types for kids from elementary school through high school, but each week brings different groups of people. Last week the campus beyond Lunder was so busy that it was difficult to find a parking space, and Dana Dining Hall was so crowded at lunch time that it might as well have been noon on a Tuesday in October. All told, there are about 120 students on campus working in various capacities, from the summer programs office to research assistance positions with many faculty members. If you know where to look, you can meet Colby students from as close by as Waterville to as far away as Botswana.

Last week, activity in the admissions office began to pick up a little as rising seniors began diving into the college search process in earnest. Although the atmosphere is definitely different in the summer, it's still a good time to visit. One of the things I often say in my information sessions is that a student can get a great education at any one of the small liberal arts colleges, but she's going to get the best education at the college that feels right to her. Given the excellent facilities, dedicated faculty, expansive opportunities in and out of the classroom, and the personal approach that are the hallmarks of all of the small liberal arts schools, it often boils down to a pretty subjective decision, and that's just fine. So I always encourage visiting students to pay attention to how they feel when they're visiting. Can they see themselves here? Do they love the idea of a little bit of an adventure that comes with spending four years in a close-knit community in a location that's radically different from their hometowns? (Most Colby students, after all, come from large metropolitan areas, from Boston to Beijing.) These kinds of impressions can form even from a half-day visit in the summer, although we always encourage prospective students to come back, if they can, during the academic year to sit in on classes, meet other professors and students, etc. The visit is a transition from abstract impressions formed by on-line research (don't forget insideColby.com, by the way) to the real deal that comes from standing on the steps of Miller Library and looking out over the campus and the countryside beyond.

I'm in the process of undergoing a transition myself. In a few short weeks. I'll be leaving my job at Colby for a new opportunity at the Munich International School in Germany. This position really fell into my lap, and my decision to leave Colby was difficult because I truly love my job here. Just as prospective students seek the right fit in a college, representing Colby was the right fit for me. Yet those of you who have read previous blog posts or have heard my information session, know that I am beyond curious about the world. My family and I lived abroad ten years ago and we loved the experience. As tough as it is to leave Colby, I know it's important to make the most of what is offered to me. It has been a privilege to to work for Colby and I have particularly loved the opportunity to meet so many, many interesting people in the course of my time here. Whether you've been an occasional follower of this blog or are a first-time reader, you've been a part of my Colby journey. I hope our paths cross again.

Spring in Maine and Elsewhere

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Thu, 27 May 2010 21:43:43 GMT

It's the end of May, things are quiet in Lunder House, and I'm not complaining. April was a blur with three large events on campus for accepted students, full houses every day for both of our information sessions, overflowing campus tour groups, as well as programs and events off-campus for prospective members of Colby's class of 2015, etc. etc. We were all pretty exhausted by the time it was over, but one thing that made it a bit more pleasant was unusually warm weather and lots of sunshine. Daffodils and apple blossoms bloomed several weeks early, making the campus look its very best. As April screeched to a close, we were gratified to find a robust response to our offers of admission and the most diverse class in Colby's history. We all heaved a sigh of relief.

Given the crazy pace during April, it's not too surprising that I had a few glitches. For example, I was invited to be a panelist for two college night programs in the Portland area, one at Gorham High School and the other at Westrook High. The events were a week apart. On the day of the first program, I was glad that I was able to leave the office in a timely manner – a few minutes early, even – as opposed to my usual style of trying to cram one thing too many into my day and therefore perpetually running late. I pulled up at Gorham High School with plenty of time to spare and made my way inside. There wasn't a lot of activity inside the building but it was early, so I just wandered around looking for room 115 where the panel was to be held. Unfortunately I couldn't find room 115 but luckily I was approached by a friendly custodian who let me know that not only is there no room 115 at Gorham High, but there was no college event that evening either. Right. Luckily Westbrook High School is only six miles from neighboring Gorham and room 115 was easy to find, so I still made it on time. The Gorham custodian winked at me when I arrived on the correct night for the program the following week (in the library). Two weeks later, I came into Lunder at the end of the very busy morning of our final Open House, and our receptionist asked me, “Don't you have a college fair in Andover this afternoon?” Of course she was correct, so I grabbed my materials, jumped in the car and drove to Massachusetts, arriving on time for the fair where I talked with over 100 students. All's well that ends well.

In May I spent 10 days in Southern California, visiting schools and community organizations as well as participating in several regional case studies events, in which students and parents review mock applications in order to learn about the process going on in admissions offices across the country each winter. Once again, I met many terrific prospective students while covering a lot of freeway miles. The final event of the trip was a big college fair at LA's College-Ready charter schools attended by 800 students of many backgrounds. It was an exciting event and well worth the effort, but sadly it meant that I had to miss Colby's commencement. I would have loved to see some of the students I helped to recruit walk across that stage, people like Marcus BoisAubin and Jake Fischer, as well as some whom I got to know quite well through their work for us in Lunder House, like Annelise Weirsema and Jessica Williams. By all accounts, it was a splendid day and all of the Class of 2010 got a sparkling send-off.

Right now, I am on a bus on my way to Logan airport in Boston. I'm bound for Red Cross Nordic United World College in Flekke, Norway, where I've been invited to be the presenter for their students who are just beginning their college search and need some background in order to understand the complicated process of applying to US colleges and universities. My fingers are figuratively crossed that the travel goes smoothly, and if it does, I should wind up in the right place at the right time.

If I do say so myself...

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 20:08:22 GMT

We had a huge Open House event on campus this past Monday, and we have two more on tap for the 19th and 26th of this month. My colleagues are spread around the country at various receptions for accepted students, and those of us left in the office are fielding phone calls and e-mail messages from students, parents and counselors with questions of all kinds.

But there's another group out there that is still on the hook: the students on the wait list. This is often a very confusing place to be, and each year we get more questions about this than perhaps any other topic. Two years ago, I wrote a post about the wait list and I present it here, again, for those of you who might be looking for a little insight. I've spruced it up a little for the Class of 2014, but basically the information is the same from year to year.

Good luck with this weighty decision!

STILL waiting…: How to handle the Wait List letter

The letter arrives. It’s a little envelope. You sigh and think to yourself, “This stinks, but at least the wait is over.”

But no. It’s the Wait List letter. Neither in, nor out. Prolonging the agony.

What do you do?

Well, for starters, you assess your options. If you’ve been accepted at several colleges, you clearly have options, and they’re probably decent ones. Does continuing uncertainty at Colby look more appealing than the sure thing? Or are you ready to move on at last?

We know there will be a substantial number of you who will decide that another college is just fine, thanks. OK, no problem. Your course of action is quick and easy: just let us know. You have a couple of easy ways to do this:

1. Check the appropriate box on the reply card that came with your letter, let us know where you plan to enroll, stick the card in the envelope, and drop it in the mail.

2. Log into the Class of 2014 portal on the Colby website and click on the Enrollment Response link,

Don’t Delay, Do It Today. The sooner you let us know, the better – for us, but more importantly for your fellow wait list students who truly do want to stay in contention.

The very worst thing you can do is to hang on the wait list when you have no intention of coming to Colby “just to see if I can get in.” Please be kind to those who really want the opportunity to become a Mule.

Let’s say you’re one of those still-aspiring Mules. What’s your best course of action?

First, let us know. Send back the card, go to the portal – or if you prefer, you can write us a letter. If you are sure that you’d come to Colby if offered a place, let us know. We want to be able to provide the opportunity for a Colby education to the students who really want it.

Lots of students are curious about whether providing further supporting information will improve their chances of being chosen from the wait list. In most cases, the answer is no; however, there are times when there is a significant difference in a student’s performance, and in those cases, a new set of grades or another demonstration of standing might be helpful.

Then take another look at your options – literally. Visit the campuses where you’ve been accepted, attend a class if you can, eat in the dining hall, talk to students. If you change your mind about Colby’s wait list, you can let us know at any point. This course of action also applies if you’re on the fence about the wait list.

Should you come to visit Colby? Absolutely. For one thing, if we are able to offer you a place from the wait list, you need to be prepared to accept or decline the place. When and if we begin to make offers from the wait list, it is almost on a one-for-one basis. In most cases, you will be asked to give us your answer within 24 hours, which won’t allow you the opportunity for a last minute visit.

How will we use the wait list this year? The answer is very simple: we don’t know, and we probably won’t know until the very end of April. We have done our best to try to accept the number of students that is predicted to bring a Class of 2014 to Mayflower Hill that’s the perfect size: 490. But this is a tricky business and that’s why we have a wait list: in order to make sure that we’ll have a class that meets the needs of the Colby community. The wait list is not compiled in a rank order; rather we use it to balance the class with respect to a variety of factors: academic and outside interests, geographic distribution, gender, etc.

Finally, remember that if you’re offered a spot from the wait list and you come to Colby, you will be able to be as successful as the next student. Don’t take my word for it, though. I’ll close with a comment that came in from a mom in reference to an earlier posting. She tells it far batter than I can.

For all those now anxiously awaiting decision letters, I want to share a personal story. Last year my daughter was on pins and needles waiting to hear from Colby (and I was worse). She was waitlisted and, of course, devastated even though she had been invited to attend other fine colleges. She made plans to attend one of those and became quite enthusiastic about it. Then she was accepted to Colby off the waitlist and, after initially resisting the school that hadn't wanted her in the first place (as she saw it), she chose Colby. She has thrived there, made the Dean's list, and made significant contributions to a varsity team. All of which only goes to show, I guess, that the whole process is very difficult and the verdict of college admission committees is hardly prescient--as they would admit. Even though my daughter was not accepted in the RD round at Colby, she's now in the top 20% of her class academically and has made contributions in many other areas. I wish all of you who are waiting for decisions well and urge you to know that a student's true worth and potential cannot be evaluated with any level of certainty by any admissions committee. There are many great colleges (and no perfect ones) and when all the admissions committees have had their say, there will be a place where every young person can thrive.

"We Tried!"

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 14:06:34 GMT

Yesterday I posted a hopeful entry about mailing the decisions. Well, to dredge up an old phrase, hope springs eternal. As it turned out, only some of the letters made it into the mail stream yesterday, and the culprit was the postage meter which simply got tired and gave up late in the afternoon. Penny Spear, our ever-optimistic office manager, did everything in her power to coax the machine back to life: she kicked it, begged it, at one point even hugged it and whispered encouraging sentiments to it, but to no avail. So frustrating!!

So we are sorry that some of you will have to wait even longer for the hard copy of your decision to show up in the mail, but all of the decisions will still be available on our secure website tomorrow afternoon. They’ll go live at 5:00 pm Colby time on Friday, March 26. Meanwhile, our stalwart mailroom magician, Beth Bridger (pictured in pink in yesterday’s post), will be taking the remainder of the mailing to Colby’s main post office across the street. The postage meter will be convalescing today. You can see it above, adorned with caution tape. Below is Penny, saying, "We tried!"

Decision Day

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 20:10:41 GMT

At the moment, just about everyone who works in Lunder House is downstairs in the mailroom stuffing envelopes, stuffing folders, running the postage meter, and generally working feverishly to try to get the decision letters in the mail by the end of today -- at long last! Some of you live far enough away that you’re unlikely to receive your letter by the day after tomorrow (Friday, March 26). Don't worry: we won't prolong the suspense too long. All students will be able to look up their decisions on our website after 5:00 pm (Colby time) on Friday. You'll need the username and password that we sent you in January, in the letter confirming our receipt of your application. The wait is almost over, folks.

Each of these letters will contain one of four decisions.

Let’s start with the Deny letter. There are many, many of these going out since the acceptance rate for this group of applications is right around one-third. Clearly this is a very disappointing letter to receive, but there is another way to look at it. The admissions process is a long period of uncertainty, and the denial letter is the one decision that puts an end to that uncertainty, allowing the applicant to move on to Plan B. It is very difficult, but at least the suspense is over. If you get this letter, rest assured that you are in good company: there are many, many wonderful people in this group. We simply don’t have room for everyone, and we’re truly sorry we can’t offer more spaces to the many terrific students who apply to Colby.

Then there is the Accept letter. This is the one that the majority of applicants hope for, although by the time the decisions are finally made, we know there are a few applicants who actually hope that they’ll have fewer options. A couple of years back, I had an e-mail exchange with a student who admitted in March that he had already been accepted to 22 colleges. This is crazy! He had way too many choices. If you fall into this category, please let us know as soon as you’ve determined that Colby is not in your plans. We have a pool of great students on our waiting list who truly want to enroll here, and you’ll be doing them a favor by politely declining our offer of admission. (Please let us know where you intend to enroll, by the way. It’s very helpful to us.) On the other hand, we will be thrilled if you choose to come to Colby – congratulations!

The Wait List letter: first, a plea. If you are given a place on the wait list and you truly do not want it, please cut yourself loose. Staying on the wait list when you have no intention of attending Colby does a real disservice to those who would jump at the chance of attending if offered a place. Be kind to your fellow students and send back the card telling us, “Thanks but no thanks.” On the other hand, if you would seriously consider an offer from the wait list, do send back the card telling us so, or if you prefer you can write a letter to that effect, especially if you have some additional information to share that wasn’t available when you applied. Another helpful element would be a strong grade report at the end of the winter trimester or the third quarter, depending on your school’s grading schedule. Students on the wait list are not ranked in any kind of order, and we won’t be able to offer any additional acceptances until the end of April, when we have a firm idea of how the entering class is shaping up. Some years we have taken 20 or more students from the wait list, but other years we don’t use the wait list at all. Predicting enrollment is very tricky business, and the wait list allows us to bring well-qualified students to Colby in the event that our projections fall a bit short.

Finally, there is a rare letter offering admission to Colby at the beginning of the second semester, with the option of beginning the Colby education at our programs in either Dijon, France or Salamanca, Spain. This allows students to start their college experience overseas, and to graduate in May, 2014 with the rest of their class. The small number of students offered this program have a level of proficiency in either French or Spanish, and have demonstrated in their applications that they have a sense of adventure and the ability to really benefit from this experience. Students find this to be perhaps the most confusing letter of all; some jump at the chance but many don’t know what to make of it! If you’re the recipient of this letter and want to discuss it, don’t hesitate to let us know.

No matter what your letter says, rest assured that we have paid very close attention to your application, and that we had very, very difficult decisions to make. But now I must sign off so that I can join the rest of the staff in the mail room to make sure those letters are ready to go out the door soon!

Parent Perspective

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:18:51 GMT

Last week was a school vacation week in several states and we were quite busy with visiting juniors beginning their college searches with families in tow. I happened to talk with a mother last Wednesday who then sent me the following e-mail message. I was so tickled that I asked her if I could publish it here. Many thanks to Ms. A.M.! --Dory

While I know that this whole college application process is based upon direction communications between student and college, and not between parent and college, per se, we parents do get schlepped from info session to tour to meal to bookstore, and so do rate in the process at least in small part, no? It is in this vein that I should like to extend a thanks to Colby for the truly down-to-earth and warm information session my family experienced last week. In truth, we had already sat in several other similar sessions at other colleges, and, quite frankly, they all seem to meld together after a while (x% go abroad, community, teacher/student ratio, supportive, yadda yadda). And while I'm not belittling the process, for it is a process and surely needs to be undertaken, your fresh approach both stands out and gave us much to chat with our daughter about about since then. Especially as she missed the information session to sit in on an anthropology class recommended by Annelise, a Colby senior, and only the very first of the veritable cadre of friendly, chatty, helpful and lovely Colby students we encountered throughout our visit. I found myself quoting the things said at the information session and referring to them more times in the past week then I care to admit! (That said, you should know that I always gave credit where credit is due!).

I agree with much of the Colby philosophy and approach to this whole gig: find a pool of schools which make your heart sing, and the song will ultimately soar, despite the final address. Sometimes it's oh-so hard for us all to keep an eye on that particular ball as the system is so opaque, quirky, competitive and down-right squirrely, if you must know. Maybe good preparation for life, which, too, is surely not laid out in a straight line where the ultimate destination can be seen at the outset of life's journey.

Our daughter? Yet again just knew that she's meant to be at a small, liberal arts college, study Classics (although now with the added possibility of layering on other related interests at Colby; especially intriguing to her was Colby's unique concept of interdisciplinary study...), and row. When we've deviated from that formula, she starts to chafe at the very outset.

Colby? She knew it to be an old friend the minute we drove up; frankly, my husband and I found her immediate embrace rather stunning. Walked right into Admissions, took charge of signing in, chatted with the lovely Annelise about which class to sit in on, began to gather materials, studied the campus map anxious to get to class, already visualizing herself a Colby student. Not our 16-year-old, who's heretofore been somewhat slow to embrace the whole college gig--rather poignantly holding on to the last vestiges of childhood, even as she navigates a daunting schedule replete with APs, learning to drive, captaining her crew team and increasingly navigating her own world. It was the first time, we, her parents, could begin to see the burgeoning college student she shall all too shortly become. It seemed that finding herself in a place that fit her like a second skin somehow made her finally begin to ponder all of college's excitement and possibility--to tip the balance, at last, towards acceptance that growing up and away is almost upon her. But that this next stage holds its own promise--of academic intrigue and social excitement. I was at once both wistful and relieved....

We were ever so lucky to actually spend the entire day at Colby. In addition to sitting in on an anthropology class (an unknown subject area, where she confidently chose to stay after, introduce herself to the professor and ask some questions about the assigned reading and clarify questions about his lecture, thus learning first-hand about the oft-promised one-on-one interaction between student and professor at Colby), we all had the most divine lunch in Foss (I highly recommend the Tuscan bean wrap--delish), went Big-Game-Hunting to meet the rowing coach and some rowers, checked out the erg room (a.k.a., Bat Cave), scoped out the Mule boat house, and had dinner with Professor Raag and a lovely senior named Terri Bello, who spoke of student/faculty research possibilities at Colby. In my whole life, I have never met so very many students and staff alike to willing to chat about a college (even the steward at Foss came 'round for a chat and to welcome us to Colby). And each one lovelier than the last, so unabashedly proud of their college. My husband is convinced there's something in the water.

Thus far? In my novice status as college hunting supportive parent, but rather graduate-level mom experience, I'd say there's just some magic in the alchemy when it all fits. Not so very scientific, Naviancy or score-ish a formula after all, it seems. How lucky those of you in Admissions are to work where magic exists and is palpable. And where you are given a hand (wand?) in the making/gmish of such a downright super-nice community. Bottle the water and sell it at the Bookstore.

Oh, speaking of the Bookstore, the student working there? Also nice and couldn't wait to reach out and find out our daughter's interests and give us another little delicious Colby morsel or two to take on our way, along with the ubiquitous sweatshirt.... And did I mention the lovely young man who helped up as the information desk at the gym? I could simply go on and on.

Evermore thanks.
Mom of a high school junior

Inversion

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:20:10 GMT

I had photo documentation of this little event but the files got corrupted somehow between my computer at home and my laptop at work. I'll try again, so check back at a later date.

In the winter, I stay home on Tuesdays and Thursdays to read applications. I gain an hour and a half this way because I eliminate my long commute, and in theory this should allow me to read more applications. I’ve created a cozy little scene in which to do this exacting work: a desk by the window overlooking a busy birdfeeder, a planter with three amaryllis bulbs just beginning to wake up after hibernating in our cellar all fall, a hot cup of tea, and a purring woodstove to keep me warm as I sit, physically inactive, for hours at a time.

I never quite get as many applications read on my days at home as I hope to – there’s always something. This morning, it was the inversion in my chimney. Here’s a little elementary school earth science refresher for you: warm air rises. Cold air sinks, because it’s heavier. If all goes well, and it nearly always does, warm air in the form of smoke rises up the chimney. This morning, it did not go well.

More practical science: the chimney for this particular woodstove is an exterior one, meaning that it is a column of brick on the outside wall of our house. And it’s somewhat warmer today than it was yesterday. This translates to last night’s chilly air trapped inside that column overnight, being colder than the air now at the top of the chimney. It’s heavier than the outside air, so it’s stuck in there. In other words, it’s a plug.

Now you’d think that lighting the fire inside the woodstove, and hence creating hot air to go up the chimney, would chase that cold air out. Well, eventually it will – but when it is first lit, the little fire sometimes can’t create hot air fast enough. And what happens? The smoke from the baby fire pours out of the stove and fills up the living room. It’s not dangerous, but it’s certainly a smelly, acrid nuisance.

The thing is, I can’t tell when this is going to occur with my idiosyncratic chimney. Most days it’s fine, but this morning it wasn’t. Luckily, I have figured out how to cope with it, but it takes some time. First: open all the windows in the living room (today’s related issue: frozen latches on a few of the storm windows). Second: put a big window fan in one of the windows, inserting it backwards so that when it’s turn on, it will exhaust the interior air and smoke out the window. Third: run outside and around the house, carrying a small box with matches, tinder and kindling. Thrash through yesterday’s fresh foot of powdery snow to the chimney, open the little cast iron clean-out door at its base, and quickly build a tiny fire inside the chimney. Keep feeding it little bits of wood and viola! The cold air plug is dispelled. The smoke stops pouring out into the living room and heads up the chimney where it belongs. The fan does its work with the smoke inside, and I’m in business.

Side note to today’s adventure: while struggling with the frozen latches on the storm window over my desk, I managed to tip over the remains of last night’s glass of water onto a partially-read application. No harm done: it’s just wet, and now it’s drying by the happily purring woodstove. In fact, there’s really no harm done at all, except that an hour’s gone by and I haven’t started reading yet.

With luck, that was the extent of the day’s interruptions. And just so you know, I actually like winter, despite these little adventures – and maybe even because of them. They’re what remind me that I can’t control EVERYthing.

OK, back to the files.

Don't Panic!

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:36:13 GMT

This is the time of year when my colleagues and I are beginning the furious reading season. We are not furious, but the pace of evaluating the applications certainly is. Even though the application deadline has come and gone, we are still receiving lots of materials, including recommendations, test scores, supplementary materials, etc. Applications are still being downloaded from the Common App website and printed for individual files. Soon to come will be mid-year grade reports (good luck with those semester exams, BTW). This means that our crack Processing Team is working valiantly to tame the paper monster in Lunder House.

So you’ve logged onto our site with the username and password that you received in the mail once your application was logged into our system. OH NO! The site says we only have one teacher recommendation and when you look at what we’ve got for SAT scores, you can tell that we don’t have your most recent results.

Don’t Panic!

First of all, it’s not going to impact our decision on your application if one component is not in your file yet. We will be reading applications for the next eight weeks, and we pay the same level of attention to the ones we read in early March that we do to those early birds who had everything in by mid-December.

Secondly, what you see on your screen is a running tally. It is updated as credentials are logged into the system, but right now there is a backlog. Be patient with us! If in two weeks’ time, you still don’t see that teacher recommendation on your account, maybe that’s the time to politely check with the teacher to make sure it was mailed.

To give you a visual of the way things are looking in Lunder House, here are some shots.

Student worker Alex sorting mail in the mail room. (Note gnome sitting on her shoulder)

Beth continues the processing in the mail room

That's Ellen peeking out from behind her computer where she's entering information about all those materials in the boxes that practically block her office door.

It's all organized and waiting for the actual filing to be done

These drawers contain applications
almost ready to read. A few documents wait on top of the appropriate cabinet to be placed in the correct file.

Kathy works with financial aid applications.

A few of the boxes of files ready to read

Boxes of files already read with preliminary decisions

The Dean checking on some Early Decision II applications

So now you've got a sense of what's going on -- it's quiet but it's humming here in Lunder.

An Engaging Story

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:46:00 GMT

I returned from a late lunch today to find Duncan Gibson '83 in the lobby here at Lunder House. He's a Behind the Decision follower and it was nice to meet him in person. Duncan lives on Cape Cod where he works for the Edward Gorey House. He has been an enthusiastic supporter of Colby for many years, including among other things volunteering for our Admissions efforts, which he actually began when he was a student.

But the reason that he turned up at Colby on this foggy, soggy day was not to renew his acquaintance with the Admissions staff (although there was a very nice chat with, among others, our colleague Barbara Sweney): he's here to become officially engaged, and it's a sweet little tale. The lucky fellow is Morgan Borer '84 of Dallas, Texas. Duncan and Morgan were ATO frat brothers while at Colby but fell out of touch long ago. The miracle that is Facebook reconnected them last year and the relationship developed beyond mere friendship.

When they decided to become engaged, exchanging rings was the important element, and they wanted it to take place in a location that was meaningful to both of them. Morgan had not been back to Colby since his fifteenth reunion and so they decided to make the trip to Mayflower Hill where they first met. They have spent the day walking the campus, admiring the recent building additions, and even having lunch in Dana. Sometime after they left Lunder, they were heading to the Museum of Art where they were to make their engagement official. With Duncan out of the room for a moment, Morgan showed me the ring he was about to present.

I'm sure that by the time I am writing this, they have made their engagement official; a wedding will follow at some point near Duncan's home on the Cape. And we in Lunder wish them all the best.

Hummingbird Heaven

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:05:35 GMT

I really didn't want to go on that last recruiting trip, even though it was to Costa Rica. For one thing, I had bought a ticket that saved the college a lot of money, but it meant leaving from Boston, rather than Portland, on a really early flight on a Sunday. My choices were to leave home in time to catch the bus from Portland to Logan that leaves at 3:15 a.m. (!!), or to go down to Boston on Saturday evening and spend the night at a hotel (which was still cheaper than the flights I tried to put together out of Portland).

Also, I was scared by my pal KC Ford's motel-based bout with the flu. On Thursday, I definitely wasn't feeling red hot so I went home a couple of hours early; Friday morning wasn't much better so I heeded all the warnings we've been getting this fall about not going to work feeling sick. Luckily, this seemed to have a positive effect. On Saturday, the heavens opened as the still-active remnants of a hurricane made their way into Maine but I packed anyway and my husband dropped me at the Portland bus station for an evening trip to Logan.

Despite the early departure, the travel to San Jose was uneventful and I arrived in plenty of time for my evening presentation at the United World College of Costa Rica. I like visiting this school for many reasons: the lush tropical setting, with bromeliads, birds-of-paradise, and the occasional exotic fauna (a tarantula this year!); the terrific students who come from all over the world (and last year five of them came to Colby -- see “Starfish” post from last January); and of course the college counselor, Greg Walsh, a Colby alum who has worked in schools all over the world. But with the early flight, the hour time change, and the evening presentation, it was a very long day and I was more than happy to hit the sheets that night. Monday was another long day: 20 interviews with interested UWC students. They are fascinating kids with academic interests the span the spectrum of our curriculum, not to mention an enviable world view -- but they wore me out!

Then came the adventure. Greg had told me months ago that Mark Hatch, Vice President for Enrollment at Colorado College, was spending a sabbatical semester with his family in Monteverde, Costa Rica this fall. Among other things, Mark is helping out at two small schools in Monteverde: one is a Quaker school and the other is called the Cloud Forest School. Mark hoped that some of the college reps traveling to the UWC in Costa Rica might be interested in making the trip up to Monteverde, and I didn't need much convincing.

So on Tuesday morning I boarded a shuttle van for the four hour trip. Monteverde's claim to fame is a big swath of cloud forest preserved in perpetuity, a process begun by a group of American Quakers who came to Costa Rica in the 1950's (hence the school). One tactic for controlling massive tourism to this pristine area is the fact that the last 25 kilometers to Monteverde are steep, rutted and unpaved – but beautiful. As the little van bounced up the mountain, I could feel myself being overtaken by a real sense of wonder at this dense landscape with sweeping views to the Pacific.

Mark met me at the funky lodge where he'd booked a room for me and we walked up to the Quaker school for an afternoon presentation to all of the 11th and 12th graders – all 8 of them. It turns out that I was the only rep who took Mark up on his offer, so I had a captive audience. That evening after a sensational sunset, I had dinner with Mark's family and heard tales of their adventures thus far, then trudged back up the steep hill to my lodge. I turned off the light before 9:00 that night and fell asleep to the sounds of exotic insects, frogs and the wind swishing through the canopy.

The next morning after a breakfast sighting of an elusive Trogan, a stunning bird related to the Quetzal – quite a thrill – Mark and I went to the Cloud Forest School where a surprise awaited me: Charlie Carrigan and Brian Prelgovisk, two '09 Colby grads who are working at a field station in nearby San Luis. I didn't know Brian when he was at Colby but Charlie worked in our office for a couple of years and it was great to see her. They joined me for the presentation, again to all the upperclassmen at the school – in fact, they really were the presentation.

Afterwards, with two hours remaining before my van departed for the ride back down to San Jose, they offered to take me to a couple of their favorite places nearby. What a treat – my own private naturalists! The first place we went was a hummingbird garden just at the edge of one of the reserves, where rangers have put up hummingbird feeders so that people can see the array of these tiny hovercraft. Charlie could name them all, small and [sort of] large, and the sight of them was utterly mesmerizing; another wide-eyed visitor pronounced, “I'm in hummingbird heaven!” Brian is a plant guy and pointed out tiny orchids I'd never have otherwise seen and explained the work he is doing at the field station through a grant awarded to Colby biology professor Judy Stone. Then we headed for a viewpoint where clouds pour over the continental divide and dissipate over the forest, with Costa Rica’s second highest waterfall in the background and the Nicoya Peninsula in the distance. The vegetation riot, acrobatic bird life, and sound of the wind distilled the Costa Rica experience for me in that moment – pura vida indeed.

So despite my reluctance to pack up and leave town yet again, the Costa Rica trip was the highlight of my travel season: fruitful in more ways than one. It would even have been worth that 3:15 a.m. bus.

Brian, Charlie and Dory at the Cloud Forest School

Shower Curtain, Queen Latifah, and the Flu

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:33:55 GMT

Since my last post, I have been traveling, as admissions officers across the country do every fall. There were a couple of other trips to Boston, and at the moment, I am in Southern California, where I have been for the past 10 days, with another 6 to go. These trips are critical for us since they give us the opportunity to meet prospective students in person and also get to know the schools at which our applicants are enrolled. They are often complicated affairs, with a combination of visits to schools and community-based organizations (CBOs), which help students with fewer resources to negotiate the college application process; field interviews (I have 6 scheduled tomorrow); college fairs; and other public events. Although the GPS has alleviated a good deal of what was formerly a major pitfall of the travel season (i.e. we don’t get lost as often as we once did), there is still plenty of excitement that can befall the hapless admissions officer on the road. Here are a couple of stories.

Boston: one of the bigger and more successful college fairs that I attend is held each year at Boston Latin School. Because of the reputation and size of the school, this fair attracts a large contingent of colleges from across the country, and I know from previous experience that the Director of Guidance, my pal Jim Montague, has to scrounge tables to accommodate all the reps in attendance. As I am preparing to leave my hotel room in plenty of time to get to the fair, I realize to my horror that I have forgotten to bring the requisite Colby table banner to cover whatever table I’m assigned. Just before heading out the door, I glance into the bathroom and there’s the solution to my dilemma: the fabric shower curtain, which is tastefully striped in shades of blue, Colby’s colors. It’s one of those affairs that has a plastic liner that goes inside the tub with the decorative fabric piece on the outside. I quickly free it from its hooks and am out the door in plenty of time – only to discover that there’s a fire at an autobody shop on the other side of the fence behind my hotel. There are fire trucks EVERYWHERE and there’s even a couple of fire fighters on the roof of the place, chopping holes in the roof with axes. Sirens screaming, emergency vehicles careening around the parking lot – it was mayhem! None-the-less, I make it to Boston Latin, discover the Colby table in the cafeteria, set up my table with the shower curtain grommets carefully folded under the cloth, and no one’s the wiser. By the end of the fair, though, I can’t keep my little secret to myself, and I spill it to both Jim Montague and a nearby prospective student. The student’s dad thought this was hilarious and snapped a picture with his iPhone. Thanks to Mia D. and her dad for providing the photo. It’s a pretty bad one of me, but the shower curtain looks great.

LA: My SoCal trip includes exactly one day with nothing Colby scheduled, so I decide to be a tourist. I definitely want to incorporate a little exercise, so I head out for Runyon Canyon above the Hollywood Hills, a popular hiking spot with some steep trails. It’s Saturday, so of course the place is mobbed with people and their dogs with the same thought in mind. As a Mainer, this is not really my idea of a hike, but I puff my way up the canyon in the hot dry sunshine for a view of LA and the Hollywood Hills, resting at the top for a drink of water. That’s when I hear the voice: Queen Latifah. In fact, I am kind of a fan, and it was unmistakable. She’s out for a little exercise with a couple of friends and their dogs. Rather than head back the way I’d planned, I follow her posse down a trail and at one point get ahead of them. At another vista point, I decide I will covertly snap her picture with my phone. Only I can tell that it’s Latifah, but if you’re interested, she’s the one in the white tee shirt, and her dog is down in front with the friend in the pink top. In my years of SoCal travel for Colby, Queen Latifah is my first real live, up close and personal celebrity sighting, a real LA experience.

Mountain View (with no view): On Friday, I was supposed to meet my colleague KC Ford in Fresno for an event we had planned to do together (KC is my Colby colleague who’s responsible for Northern California and has been traveling there), but on Wednesday I got a call from her and she didn’t sound so great. In fact, she has been stricken with the flu: fever, wracking cough, aches and pains, and no appetite. She was forced to cancel all her appointments and was stuck in a Best Western with her misery, dragging herself out only to replenish her supply of Extra Strength Tylenol and buy a little food that she didn’t feel like eating. Getting the flu is bad enough at home, but in a hotel? In Mountain View with no view? Feeling frustrating about all the carefully laid plans that had to be cancelled? The good news is that the fever broke on Friday afternoon and she is on the mend. But this is the antithesis of fun travels.

So – off to bed so I can wake up and do those interviews. Luckily there’s an extra hour to sleep tonight. Stay tuned for the next installment of Tales From the Road.

September Wrap Up

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:29:41 GMT

I can't let September get away from me without posting something. I have had great ideas about what to write for the past month but have not been able to find an hour to develop them into anything coherent. I especially wanted to finish the story about the adventure in China in August, but that news is very old by now. In an effort to put something out into the ether, I will resort to a little summary of what I've been up to for the past four weeks.

Special Students. Anyone who is not a regularly enrolled student but wishes to take a course at Colby, for credit or as an auditor, must go through a process to register. Someone in the Admissions Office has to oversee this, and I am that someone. I disseminate applications, meet individually with each potential special student, answer endless questions over the phone and via e-mail, work with the Registrar and numerous faculty members. This process has been endless since August 24.

Travel planning for numerous trips to Boston, one of my most important areas; visits to Maine high schools; a big trip at the end of October to Southern California; a short trip to Costa Rica in November. All of these appointments and arrangements should have been completed by Labor Day; however, preparations are on-going.

Event planning An overview of Eastern small liberal arts colleges for students in Southern California when I am there in late October; on-campus visitation programs in October and November. Venues, publicity, activities, speakers, food. Coordinating professors, colleagues, student volunteers, and trying to satisfy all parties. Impossible task!

So far, three trips to Boston, including 5 college fairs (4 in one day), 15 school visits, 2 community-based organizations. Three days of travel in Maine.

The on-going and the usual: interviews with visiting students, presenting information sessions, giving input on projects like the new admissions video, trying to keep up with expense reports and inquiry cards gleaned while on the road, etc.

The highlight of the month: students arriving! One of the most rewarding elements of this work is when the students we worked hard to recruit actually begin their careers at Colby. Three dinners: one with all of the newly arrived international students, put on by Sue McDougal, the Dean for International Students. Two organized by a few of us in Admissions to help refine our messages for recruiting various groups of students: one for United World College students, held at a colleague's home in the Belgrade Lakes, complete with impromptu singing around the piano; the other for students of color, held at Cancun, a relatively new Mexican restaurant in Waterville where there is finally decent Mexican food to be had this side of the Mississippi!

And a final note: Family Homecoming Weekend occurred last week with mostly beautiful weather, albeit a little ahead of Maine's stunning foliage. My husband and I were excited to be able to welcome a family from Swaziland to our home on the coast. One of our newly enrolled students, Stephen Nodder, is the son of the principal at Waterford Kamhlaba United World College of Southern Africa. This term, his dad is on sabbatical at UWC-USA, so Stephen's parents and younger brother are currently in New Mexico and were able to make the trip to Maine to see Colby for the first time. The Nodders have been very hospitable to me when I have been in Swaziland, and it was great to be able to return the favor. The best part was teaching the newcomers how to eat lobster. A good time was had by all.

Shanghaied

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 15:33:32 GMT

Back in March, four Chinese students who were seniors at four American liberal arts colleges conceived the idea of spreading the word about the liberal arts philosophy in their home country. Very ambitious and high achieving students themselves, they wanted to let other motivated and adventurous Chinese students know that their own small colleges, and many others like them, offer a superior American education even though they are unknown in China. On August 5, I left the U.S. to join representatives from 11 other highly selective liberal arts colleges in Beijing for a 10-day tour of several major Chinese cities organized by the four now newly-minted graduates. Assisted by several other Chinese students at American colleges, they had secured sponsorship to cover all the expenses for the college reps and had pulled off a highly successful publicity effort. Very shortly after the start of the tour, however, a significant conflict arose with the sponsoring organization. What follows is the story I sent back to family, friends and colleagues partway through the journey.

August 11, 2009: We arrived in Hangzhou today around noon after a very pleasant two+ hour bus ride from Shanghai, and had a successful event this afternoon with presentations followed by interviews. We are quite the congenial group, which is particularly important as you shall see in the following story. The organizing group of four Chinese '09 liberal arts graduates, plus 2 current Grinnell students, is amazing. They are Victor from Wabash, Mike from Washington and Lee, Kevin from Colby, and Maggie from Grinnell, along with two other Grinnell students: Da, a rising sophomore, and Yining, an incoming first year. Their ability to think on their feet is incredible, and they really know how to capitalize on their resources. All in all, it has been a good experience, but it has not been without its challenges.

After arriving in Beijing last Thursday, we had a bit of a rest day on Friday; our official duties consisted of an afternoon meeting and an evening welcome dinner with officials of CEDCA, the education agency that was contracted by the organizing students to underwrite the expenses of the tour. The program was very busy on Saturday in Beijing: a long, long day of presentations, a college fair, interviews, and more presentations in the evening. The student turnout was in the neighborhood of 250. At the end of it all, we hustled to the airport and caught a flight to Shanghai, arriving at our hotel after midnight. (Thanks to prospective student Tony Deng and his father for this photo of my presentation in Beijing.)

On Sunday morning we met for breakfast and learned from our stalwart young organizers that things were not going well with CEDCA. The students had been very clear, including strong contractual language, that CEDCA was not to use the event as a marketing opportunity for their very expensive services (they charge upwards of $10,000 per family to “package” students' applications to U.S. colleges and universities), yet CEDCA people showed up at the Beijing event with a large banner promoting their services, and they solicited families to sign with them on the spot. The student organizers confronted the CEDCA people, but the latter refused to back down. From the beginning, we college reps had been quite clear with students and families that the use of an agency is not only unnecessary, but it's unethical to present essays or any part of the application that is not the student's own work; in fact, at the presentation in Shanghai covering the U.S. application process, the Wesleyan rep came right out and said, “Don't use an agency; you must do this work yourself.”

We proceeded with the college fair, but before heading to lunch, Mike (one of the organizers) told each of us to proceed right away to the lobby for a quick meeting. When we stepped off the elevator, we were met by Kevin from Colby who told us to go immediately to our rooms, pack up and come back to the lobby in 10 minutes: things had escalated with CEDCA and the organizers had broken their ties with the agency.

We did as we were told, and 10 minutes later we were all bundled into cabs for the quick drive to the Shanghai Hilton. As Mike said, everything in China runs on relationships, and it turns out that Yining, the incoming first year at Grinnell, had a very important relationship: her father is an executive with ties to the manager of the Hilton which readily comped us for two nights' accommodations (which was quite a nice upgrade, I might add). After dropping our bags, we strolled across the street to a small restaurant where Da's parents ordered 20 incredible dishes, creating a fabulous Chinese banquet for us to sample. During the meal, Kevin revealed the details of the break with CEDCA, which turned out to be fairly sordid and even involved a threat on the part of the CEO to have his driver beat up Kevin, Mike and Victor if the group did not agree to disband and allow CEDCA to take over the rest of the tour. Recognizing that the colleges could not appear to be endorsing the use of agencies in general, and certainly not this particular one, the organizing students made the decision to carry on without CEDCA and to call on their resources to continue the tour on their own. They had informed the many prospective students who were expecting interviews that afternoon in Shanghai that there was a delay and a change in venue, and after our unbelievable lunch we went back to the Hilton where I interviewed 10 terrific students.

Lunch with Da and his parents

Meanwhile, the organizers were working hard to pull together an alternate plan for the rest of the tour – and the weather forecasters were predicting that Typhoon Morakot, which had devastated Taiwan, was bearing down on Shanghai. On the other side of the controversy, CEDCA contacted all the students who had signed up for the events in the remaining cities to tell them that they had been cancelled. Interestingly enough, however, some of the parents here in Hangzhou decided that this opportunity was too important for their children to miss, so they called in some chits and arranged for us to have the same schedule, only one day later. Somehow, and I don't really understand this, the regional government in Shenzhen has elected to pick up the tab for us in their city and apparently there will be some kind of official government shindig in our honor once we get there. The only disappointing element is that the event in Chengdu had to be cancelled altogether (the organizers had arranged for us to see pandas there), but instead, they have arranged another event in Guangzhou (without pandas).

After all the excitement on Sunday, we had some downtime on Monday morning, but in the afternoon we went on a hastily arranged visit to the High School Affiliated with Shanghai Normal University, a 4 year old school offering the British A-Level curriculum. 100% of its graduates continue to universities abroad, including 40% in the U.S. They were very glad to have us, and they turned out an audience of about 100 prospective students and families despite it being summer vacation. We met faculty and had a tour of this impressive school; all of us agreed that it was a bonus to be able to spend time in one of China's premier high schools. Apparently there is a school visit planned for Guangzhou as well.

With Jennifer from Barnard at the school in Shanghai

Throughout the tour thus far, Maggie, Mike, Kevin, Victor and Da (Yining had to leave us after the weekend) have been incredibly solicitous of our well-being and have handled the raging tumult as I could only hope to. They conceived this idea back in March as a way to give back to the colleges that benefitted them tremendously, and they sincerely want to raise awareness of the liberal arts college concept in China. They have given their lives to this extensive and complex project over the past few months and what they have accomplished is truly amazing. The only fault to be found is perhaps their naiveté in thinking that CEDCA would really abstain from using the tour as a marketing tool. Fortunately the college reps are a great, roll-with-the-punches crew. We are picking up some more expenses than we thought we might have to (mostly meals here and there), but so far the response from students and families has been excellent.

So although Morakot did not materialize in Shanghai, the tour has been through its own little typhoon but we are safe, well-cared-for, and grateful for this experience.

The tallest buildings in China in the gathering gloom preceding the typhoon that never came to Shanghai:

The Interview

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:21:10 GMT

On the whole, the weather this summer has been a washout. But last week I was on vacation, and I lucked out with five sunny days in a row. Every year, I spend a week on a tiny island off the coast in a little one room place that's a wee step above camping. It has electricity and therefore a fridge, and there's a gas stove as well. There's no running water, but a well is just a few steps off the deck. It has been so wet this year that the water table is right at ground level, so for the first time in all my years there, I just leaned down and dipped the bucket into the water rather than having to drop it in and haul it back up. The best thing about this place, though, is the location: just above a beautiful sand beach where 20 people would be considered a big crowd. The deck overlooks a couple of other islands and is the ideal place for reading. And that's what I did: five books in eight days, interspersed with throwing the ball into the ocean for our dog, who loves the island as much as I do.

But once back in the office this week, the rain has returned, although not as vehemently as in June. None-the-less, our visitors to campus have been making ample use of our supply of ponchos and umbrellas; as the intrepid tour guides lead stalwart families around the campus, I can't help thinking that it looks like a parade of mushrooms outside my second story office window. I keep wondering if anyone will actually come to Colby, given the dampness of their experiences; even though I realize that all of the Northeast has been suffering the same wet fate this year, I worry about the students I've been interviewing from Minneapolis, Chicago and other points beyond this persistent weather pattern. So far, though, everyone seems to have been quite game.

I have had some interesting interviews: among them, a triplet from Pittsburgh who's striking out on her own in terms of the college search (her brothers are looking in the South); a boy from Denver who holds three passports and not surprisingly loves languages; a girl from just down the road in Hallowell, Maine who is having trouble stuffing all the sciences she'd like to take into her schedule. A first this summer: the girl who likes to read Thomas Hardy and James Joyce for fun. Interviews give us a chance to find out things about prospective students that may not be highlighted in the application, and often students can give us a more complete sense of what's important to them. This helps us imagine how they might fit into the Colby community, and how we can help them indulge in or expand upon their interests.

Some interviews are better than others, of course. Sometimes it's a matter of chemistry between the student and the interviewer, but often it has to do with the preparation that a student has done – or not, as the case may be. Students are “trying on” Colby when they come for a visit, and we don't expect them to be experts on the college by any means. But knowing a little background is important, in that it shows us that the student has a real interest in Colby, rather than visiting just because someone else (counselor, consultant, grandma) thinks it's a good idea. Don't ask the interviewer how many students attend the college, or whether we have a football team – figure out that basic stuff in advance. On the other hand, you may want to know more about our Jan Plan or where students are likely to study abroad or how the advising system works. I talked with a student this week who has a food allergy; naturally she wanted to know how that might affect her (answer: Dining Services is very accommodating of this concern and works with students to make sure they have choices that will work for them). It's not unusual for a student to come to the appointment with a little list of questions, which keeps them on track in case they get nervous.

As for nerves, it's important to remember that admissions people actually like high school students, and we know that conversing with an unknown adult for half an hour may seem a bit daunting. Remember that we are not going to ask you to elaborate on the causes of the War of 1812 or recite a Shakespeare sonnet. We're going to ask you about your academic interests and your activities outside of the classroom; we might want to find out where you see yourself heading in the future – in college and beyond. We could ask you about your tastes in books, and sometimes in music or films or travel if these topics arise in the course of the conversation. How have you spent your summers? What do you like to do for fun? Your answers to any of these questions help us to get a sense of who you are.

Except in the very rarest of cases, nobody “fails” an interview. If you've having an off day, or you suddenly forget what classes you took last year, it's not going to keep you out of Colby. In other words, an interview usually helps your case no matter what. That's why we recommend them.

For many students, though, it's just not possible to arrange an interview. Usually this has to do with distance, but it may also have to do with a busy schedule, family circumstances or any number of other things. We are able to offer off-campus options: I notify students on our mailing list via e-mail when I will be traveling in their area, and we also have alumni volunteers all over the U.S. and abroad who are happy to interview nearby students. You can contact our office to learn more about this. Generally if you live within a reasonable distance of Colby, we encourage you to visit the campus and have an interview at that time. But if this isn't feasible for some reason even though you live nearby, we don't hold it against you.

I can't wrap this up without talking about a New York Times article that made the rounds in Lunder House recently with a universal reaction of guffaws and perhaps an occasional gagging noise. It was about a fashion show put on by an educational consultant to enlighten her clients about what to wear to the interview. The clothes were absolutely outrageous! I would summarize her advice along these lines: popped collar Nantucket Red meets madras miniskirt ruffled plunge. My last word of interview advice: we don't pay much attention to what students wear. Neat and clean is sufficient.

See you soon – and don't forget the umbrella.

Africa, Pt II

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:11:34 GMT

After visiting three very interesting, very different schools in Johannesburg, the weekend arrived. My next appointment was Monday afternoon at the Waterford KaMhlaba United World College of Southern Africa in Mbabane, Swaziland's capital city. Previous posts have touched on the United World Colleges, or UWC's; they are twelve residential secondary schools around the world, most of which focus on the final two years of high school and offer the International Baccalaureate, or IB. Students at each of them are selected by national committees in their home countries without regard to their ability to pay, and each UWC has students from 80 or more countries. Colby is very fortunate to have a generous grant that allows us to meet the financial need of UWC graduates whom we admit, and it is the reason that Colby has a substantial population of international students. This would be my third visit to Waterford and I have come to have a special appreciation for the tiny country of Swaziland, a nation with more than its share of problems including poverty and a massive HIV/AIDS infection rate, but also a friendly, laid-back and open culture that is very appealing.

So when I mapped out the itinerary, I planned our free weekend for Swaziland. When my husband Dave decided to accompany me on this trip, he wanted to be able to indulge in his serious photography hobby and he wanted to see some of Africa's spectacular fauna. While he'd already shot some great photos in Jo'burg, I decided that a good place to combine the two interests would be at Mkhaya, one of Swaziland's three big game parks. Flying into Swaziland is a trip in itself. It's a short hour from Jo'burg on a twin engine prop plane over South African countryside punctuated by huge mining operations and the massive Sun City resort. The Mataspha International Airport – well, there it is. Note the reflection of the plane in the window.

Mkhaya is in the southeast of Swaziland and after spending a night in Manzini, the country's largest city, we set off in our right-hand drive rental car (right turns and roundabouts are particularly challenging) for the pickup point. The lodge is some distance from the boundary of the game park, so guests are met by a guide at 10:00 a.m. and follow the park's Landrover to a secure spot a few kilometers from the gate. Then guests and their bags transfer into the Landrover and the first of three game drives begins en route to the lodge itself.

The Mkhaya landscape is varied and spectacular, as are the wildlife and the flora too. Guides are incredibly knowledgeable about all of it, from geology to insect life to to conservation practices to symbiotic relationships between plants and animals. Mkhaya is no Kruger National Park in sheer land mass, but it is well managed and large enough so that the game drives never feel repetitive. Of course winter was coming on at the time of our visit, so it was hardly the high tourist season. There was only a handful of other guests in the park during our 24 hour stay, and we particularly enjoyed the company of a Belgian couple recently posted with the foreign service in the nearby Mozambiquan capital of Maputo. We were rewarded with innumerable sightings of mammals, reptiles and birds large and small. We fell asleep listening to the sounds of Bush Babies (so named for their cry that sounds exactly like a human infant) and innumerable insects chirping in the chilly night.

After the final game drive at sunrise and a great breakfast, we were taken back through the park to retrieve our car and we headed off to the northwest to Mbabane (carefully keeping left). Waterford has a guest house on its lovely campus which sits high above the small capital city. Swaziland's landscape varies widely in spite of the country's small size, and Mbabane sits at an altitude a good deal higher than much of the rest of the country. The first time I went there, I had checked the weather forecast for the airport, which is only about 25 kilometers from Mbabane but much lower. Consequently I was freezing the whole time I was at Waterford. The hilly landscape more than makes up for the cooler temperatures, however.

I gave my presentation at Waterford to a full house, including the school principal, Laurence Nodder, whose son Stephen will enroll at Colby in September. Once again, students had great questions about the college and I was delighted by their interest. I had a chance to see another Waterford graduate, Thando Dlamini, who also will be coming to Colby this fall. The next day, I interviewed 17 students, one after another. Although it was an extremely long day, meeting these fascinating kids is amazingly energizing. They had come to Waterford from all over the world: Tanzania, Netherlands, Seattle, Italy, Bulgaria, and many from Southern Africa. It's not uncommon at UWC's to meet students whose backgrounds are multi-national, such as the girl from Edinburgh (with the requisite Scottish brogue) whose mom is Danish and dad is Nigerian, or the Swazi citizen whose parents are from Cyprus. The following morning, which was our departure day, I managed to squeeze in one more interview with a girl from rural Ethiopia who told me her story of defying the conventions of her small village – and indeed defying her mother – by pursuing more than just a rudimentary education. I was so glad to have been able to hear this shy girl tell me her heroic story in person. She is a math and science whiz.

Then began the long journey home. We had a big layover in Johannesburg (here's Dave at an outdoor airport cafe) but our flight back to New York was half empty so I had four seats to myself – almost better than first class. It was a lovely evening when we finally arrived in Bowdoinham, and I spent the following day regrouping at home in the warm June sunshine. That, unfortunately, was about the last we've seen of the sun this summer, but that's another story for another day. Suffice it to say, the trip to Africa was a satisfying success. Colby is fortunate to have the means to attract a global student body, and I am fortunate to be able to spread the word about this opportunity.

Back from Africa

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 20:05:36 GMT

Outside my window, it’s pouring rain on the already ferociously green campus. Gutters are overflowing. Our summer tour guides are sloshing around the college in Wellies, leading hardy prospective families armed with massive blue and white Colby umbrellas. Some of our visitors are draped in ponchos provided by our office for just such occasions. It’s not exactly cold outside, but it’s fairly dismal. If those families like it today, they’ll love it when the sun’s out.

This is a far cry from where I was two weeks ago: Southern Africa, where it was what passes for “winter:” chilly evenings, bright sunny days, and very, very dry. I have recently returned from a ten-day trip where I met and interviewed students at three schools in Johannesburg and one in Swaziland. It was my third journey to that part of the world for Colby. Planning for this trip is always challenging since most schools there utilize an academic calendar suited to the southern hemisphere (January through December, divided into three terms by seasonal holidays), but a few are on a northern hemisphere calendar that's more familiar to most readers. Finding the overlaps can be a bit tricky.

The first school I visited this year was the American International School in Johannesburg, which operates on the northern calendar and utilizes the International Baccalaureate (IB). Regular classes were over for the year by the time I arrived and the students were engaged in review for final exams. I had an excellent visit with the college counselor there and hope we’ll see some applications in the future from this very international student body .

Next was the African Leadership Academy, a new school in its first year of operation. Its goal is ambitious: “To transform Africa into a peaceful and prosperous continent by developing and supporting its future leaders.” I was welcomed by Chemeli Kiplorir, the experienced and spirited college counselor (that’s us at the school in the adjacent photo). After a tour of the well-established campus, I met with about a third of ALA’s pioneer class of bright, articulate and highly directed students who hail from the length and breadth of the African continent, Morocco to Malawi. They follow the British-style A-Level curriculum. We hope to have some of them at Colby in the coming years.

The final school in Johannesburg was LEAP 3, the newest campus of the LEAP School of Science and Maths, founded in Cape Town in 2004 with another ambitious goal: “… the aim of creating a model that could begin to address the inequalities in the South African education system.” The school is housed in a luxurious mansion, complete with swimming pool and riding stable, in a fancy suburb called Lindbro Park. The students all come from Alexandra, a township whose borders are not five minutes from Lindbro Park, but it’s a world apart. Think Soweto, without its two Nobel Laureates. Many LEAP 3 students come from child-headed households; many live in what are euphemistically called “informal dwellings:” i.e. tin shacks. Students are taught to swim in the pool, and the spotlessly clean stable is used for daily all-school assemblies. While making my way through a math classroom (formerly a bedroom), I saw students working on what looked to me like Trig utilizing graphing calculators. This technology was good to see, as I had just learned that all of the school’s computers had been stolen during the recent fall holidays (crime can be scary in South Africa – and that is a bit of an understatement). My tour guides were Patience and Princess, two delightful members of LEAP 3’s first class (pictured by the pool). They will complete the South African Matric next year. After speaking with teachers and administrators, I was invited to address the entire student body during the assembly. Clearly, I was the first person who had ever introduced them to the notion that they could pursue university studies in the U.S., and most of the students regarded me with a quizzical “Are you for real?” expression. But later, several approached me to learn more about this mind-boggling idea.

It’s a very very long way from Southern Africa to Waterville, Maine in so many ways. I loved visiting there once again, getting glimpses into a world so different from my own and yet very much the same on fundamental levels, like the importance of education. Each of the Johannesburg schools that I visited is doing excellent work in addressing this with different curricula, different calendars, and different kinds of students. Next time, I’ll write a bit about Swaziland and what I did over the weekend while I was there. Meanwhile, I could use a little of that dry South African winter weather here on soggy Mayflower Hill.

Heading West

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Wed, 13 May 2009 20:56:42 GMT

I left home this morning in pitch dark to catch an early flight that will have me in LA by 11:30 in the morning, local time. I have six days of presentations and meetings strung between the San Fernando Valley and San Diego, and it's fun to be traveling again. Many of the rest of my colleagues spent a good deal of the month of April on the road but my events are coming a bit later, and the timing is fine. In admissions parlance, we have our class, it seems, and after minimal wait list activity, we are starting to release some of the students from from the wait listwho have patiently hoped that we might be able to find a place for them in the Class of 2013. It's not completely over, though, since there's a chance that continuing wait list activity at other colleges could affect us in coming weeks. But we know that we will not be able to offer many more places – if any – and it's only fair to inform students whom we know we will not be able to accept.

Classes ended last Friday and the exam period begins today, so students are very, very busy with papers, projects and finals. The end is in sight, and because of my departure, I feel as if it snuck up on me a bit. All of a sudden yesterday, I realized that I would not see a lot of our students again for months – some of them, like Blair Braverman, our super star insideColby blogger, will be away for a very long time while studying abroad for the fall semester (Blair will be in Namibia on an environmental studies program. We will hear little from her since she'll be in the bush and largely out of internet connectivity; the web still is not quite world-wide. If you haven't checked out Blair's blog, stop reading my comparatively meager efforts and click on insideColby.com right away!). I'll be back on Mayflower Hill in time for graduation, though, and for the first time in my five years at Colby, I've ordered my robe and academic hood so I can be a participant in Commencement rather than just a spectator. This class is the first one that I had a hand in recruiting and I must admit to being both excited and sad to know that some of those students won't be at Colby in September.

One of the biggest contrasts for me in switching sides of the desk to college admissions from high school counseling was the lack of daily contact with students I had come to know well. While working in high schools, I loved watching kids develop over time: there's a big difference between a junior from the beginning of the year to the end, for example. In admissions, we work closely with students – some more so than others, of course – but once they're on campus, we often don't see them again which is as it should be. Some members of the Class of 2009 have taught me a different lesson, though. I recently attended the honors thesis defense of a student I had interviewed on my very first Colby trip to California in November, 2004. Christie Shu was a bright and energetic high school senior: a fencer with an interest in international issues. I've seen more of Christie than most students over the years because she has been a volunteer extraordinaire for the admissions office, but certainly not on the same regular basis as kids I worked with on the high school side. Her oral presentation of her honors thesis during our Student Research Symposium was a proud moment for me. She's still energetic and interested in international issues, but as someone who has really taken advantage of what Colby can offer, Christie revealed a sophisticated level of scholarship in her research on medical practices among citizens in St. Petersburg, Russia where she has spent a lot of time during Jan Plans and a full year abroad. Christie stopped by my office yesterday and I loved our little debriefing of her work. She's off to Kazakhstan next year on a very select Rotary program (click here to read about this), where she'll build on the skills she gained at Colby in the course of her majors in Russian Studies and International Studies, not to mention her minor in Anthropology. So while my contact with Christie has been of a different sort, she and other members of her class have shown me a different kind of development over time with a level of sophistication that is very impressive to me.

My SoCal sojourn will land me back in Waterville in time for Commencement and I am looking forward to seeing the successful conclusion of a process that began with these students at the same time that I began my stint at Colby (and I'm psyched to hear Commencement addresses by Greg Mortenson, of Three Cups of Tea fame, as well as class speaker Qiamuddin Amiry – watching him develop over time at Colby has been a priviledge in a class of its own). And then I will head out again, to Africa this time, to continue our work on recruiting the Class of 2014. I'm looking forward to watching those as yet unmet students develop too.

Other Voices

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 21:55:41 GMT

I ended the last post on an optimistic note, hoping that the glass-half-full outlook I’ve observed in Colby students would prevail as time moves on. I am delighted (and relieved), a week later, that this has proven to be true. But don’t take my word for it. Here, instead, are a number of voices that have something to say about Colby now.

Audell, Marcus and Mavrik are roommates, and they were among the students at play that I mentioned at the end of my last post. It was Marcus’s idea for me to talk to some students to get individual opinions on the campus climate, and each of them stopped by Lunder this week. Audell is a junior Econ major from the Bronx, NY. He’s been involved with Colby’s very successful Mock Trial team, and recently won a five-way election for treasurer of the Student Government Association. He views himself as someone who tries to see the bigger picture, but says in a philosophical way, “Things happen. Things get blown out of proportion, especially in an emotionally charged situation.” Audell’s point of view, echoed in many casual conversations this week, is that the incident has started a dialogue between students and administration. “I care about my school,” he says, “but we’re all guilty of homogenous thinking sometimes on this campus. We as a student body are better for [what’s happened] and we need to keep up the communication between students.” Audell is well aware that the intense media coverage could have an impact on who decides to come to Colby, and he has a message for students still making the enrollment decision: “You should feel that much better about coming to Colby now. The unity created last week is something we can all rally around.”

I first met Marcus when he was a junior at his public charter school in Boston. Now a junior at Colby, he’s an American Studies major with an interest in media. “Last week taught me more about media than I could ever learn in a classroom,” he told me. He perceived bias and sensationalism in what was included in various reports, but just as much in what was left out, leaving impressions that were both misleading and misinformed. “Colby,” he says, “is a place full of people. Ignorance is an everyday occurrence. [People] need to get outside their boxes. Sometimes students can be quick to point their fingers at the institution but they’re a part of it too. It’s how you make peace, firstly, with yourself [that matters].” For his part, Marcus is ready to move on. “It feels good to have investigators here doing their jobs,” he says. The last ten days have reinforced his belief that “Colby is what you make it. People will support you here. Students will support you.”

Mavrik is a sophomore from Boston with an interest in law and community organizations. Sitting in the sunshine outside Lunder this afternoon, he was relaxed and positive. “I think the administration is doing a really good job right now; they’re taking the right steps and looking out for the students.” Mavrik attended the meetings and rallies held last week, and also made a point of speaking directly with Colby president Bro Adams and Dean of Students Jim Terhune before drawing any conclusions. “The most positive element is the cohesive community demonstrated by students, faculty and administration.” He and Marcus both admitted that it would have been easier to go to a university in Boston but they chose to come to Colby because they knew the environment here would make them grow in ways that wouldn’t have happened otherwise; they made the decision to step outside of their own boxes, in Marcus’s words. I might add that Colby is better off as a result.

Looking at Colby from a different angle were the international students of the Class of 2009, who were honored yesterday afternoon at a reception at which they were each asked to recount a special memory of their time here. It is always great to hear from students from all over the world: Senegal, India, China, Zimbabwe, Burma and Bulgaria to name just a few. They are entering that nostalgic phase that wells up each spring, and their memories were funny and poignant: special professors and staff members; writing papers in a classroom in the dead of night in the dead of winter with other long-suffering students; illicit sledding excursions at 2:00 a.m. The majority of the stories emphasized relationships these students have formed here, and many times we heard the phrase, “It’s the people.” A few of these students also mentioned the unity created last week among their lasting images of Colby. A crowd favorite was from a student from India who shared two memories: the day during her first year when she tried snow shoeing, cross country skiing, and ice fishing for the first time all in one day -- and sitting on the quad last week with 800 students wearing red. She got a big round of applause.

Earlier in the week, I received a lovely note from Christie, a senior from Pasadena who has volunteered tirelessly in Admissions throughout her four years here and would unabashedly tell you that she loves Colby. She has taken incredible advantage of the opportunities here, double majoring in Russian Studies and International Studies with a minor in Anthropology, and she has been elected to Phi Beta Kappa (to no one’s surprise). Christie has managed to spend a part of each of her years at Colby in Russia (all of last year, in fact). I am really excited to hear her present her honors thesis next week at our annual Student Research Symposium. Part of Christie’s note: “I really hope that many of the students you were hoping to attract end up coming to Colby. I strongly believe that one incident does not define a school. I hope that accepted students realize that.”

And I will interject here that the accepted students who have come to campus do seem to realize that despite these incidents, Colby will still be Colby, only better. It’s the students who can’t come to campus that have been worrying me. But then today I received an e-mail message from the mother of an accepted student in response to last week’s blog. I called to ask if she would mind my including some of her words here, and she graciously obliged. “When I first read about the incident, I thought, what terrible timing! Of course there is no good time for something like that to happen. Our oldest child was a sophomore at Duke during the lacrosse scandal so we certainly know how the press loves these type of situations. The Colby incident is very different from what happened at Duke, but I agree with you that hopefully some good will come out of it. Among other things, it presents a good opportunity for parents to have important conversations with their children, for the community to realize the importance of gathering all the facts, and even for prospective parents to see how the administration handles the situation. From the campus forum podcast, it seems like President Adams is a good listener and has genuine concern for all parties involved.”

It was reassuring to me to read those words, particularly because those opportunities that she outlines seem to be coming to fruition. The glass is more than half-full.

Tough Week

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:39:00 GMT

“April is the cruellest month,” the poet wrote. This week at Colby we certainly have been feeling that way owing to an incident that occurred in the early hours of Easter morning. Our community is a tightly-knit one, and any time there is a significant disturbance to its equilibrium, we are knocked for a loop. Because the situation has been picked up in various media outlets regionally and nationally, the wide-spread attention has added to the sense of shock.

There is a great deal that we do not know, and the College is in the process of hiring an impartial party, unconnected to Colby, to investigate. What we do know is that three students were arrested on campus in those early hours and that there are many unanswered questions, one of which concerns the amount of force used at the time of the arrests. The media coverage has felt relentless to us all, and students are vocal about their shock over the incident. We are all anxious for answers.

I can only speak for myself, and I will say that I have been feeling stunned, confused, angry and sad for what has transpired in a community of which I am proud to be a part. Of course, it could hardly have happened at a worse time as far as we in Lunder House are concerned. All fall, we combed the country and in fact the globe to find interesting and able students who might want to come to Colby. All winter, we poured over their applications and made the best admission decisions that we could. Cruel April is the one month when those accepted students must decide where they will attend. If you were a student in Hawaii or Texas reviewing this week’s media coverage, what would you think?

But of course we are professionals, and despite these upsetting events, we deeply believe in Colby and we are doing our jobs. On Monday, we held the second of our three Open Houses for accepted students and their families. It was the largest turnout we have ever had at such an event, and it was followed by an opportunity for some of those accepted students to spend the night on campus with a student host.

To some extent, our hearts were in our throats about this. The student body, upset about what had transpired over the weekend, organized a meeting that evening to discuss what had happened and to decide what they wanted to do about it. The turnout was enormous, and included many of the recently accepted students. I was not there, but the next day I heard from a variety of students that the mood in the room was one of unity and positive energy. Students were articulate and respectful in voicing their concerns and they formulated a course of action to begin the following day with a rally on the campus’s central quad at noon. One accepted student who attended the meeting told a family member how exciting it was to witness the students come together as a community; another potential member of the Class of 2013 spoke during the event and expressed his desire to become a part of a college that could unite in this way.

The TV trucks starting arriving late Tuesday morning, and by noon there was a sea of people on the quad, most wearing red to express their solidarity. In fact, it was the largest such campus gathering in recent memory, more than 800 people according to the evening broadcast on Maine Public Radio. Dubbing themselves “Colby United,” students had an opportunity to express their concerns, doubts and feelings in a positive environment. It was an incredibly impressive event.

On Wednesday evening, President Bro Adams held a campus forum that attracted hundreds of students, faculty and staff. Because of other events previously scheduled on campus, the only available venue large enough to accommodate the expected crowd was the ice arena (the ice having been removed some weeks ago, I must add). The forum lasted nearly three hours, and if you’re interested you can watch the whole thing on . On Thursday, the week’s edition of “The Colby Echo” was released and featured extensive coverage of the week’s events and students’ reactions to them and to the coverage. (You can check it out on .) A Colby United Facebook group has been very active all week.

Meanwhile, Tuesday also brought big crowds of accepted students to campus, and my colleagues have been busy this week hosting receptions for accepted students and their families in Boston, New York and Chicago. At the same time, we are fielding phone calls and e-mails from concerned high school counselors, alumni, parents and accepted students about the situation.

And now it is Friday afternoon. One of the things I am most grateful for this week is five straight days of bright sunshine and blue skies. Had there been drizzle and fog, I think it would have been unbearable. As I look out my window up toward Miller Library, there are students outside playing. They’re playing pick-up football, Frisbee, whiffleball, catch; they’re negotiating a slack rope and cruising a bit aimlessly on bikes and long boards. In other words, they’re doing what college students are supposed to be doing on a nice spring Friday afternoon.

But there’s something more there, too. I just walked outside and had a little chat with some students I helped to bring to Colby, students whom you’ll see in the pictures of the rally. They are not angry, not incensed, not at the moment. They are united. And that is a remarkable thing.

So it certainly has been the toughest week I’ve endured as part of this community, but there is hope at the bottom of it, and optimism that good can come out of bad. One of the subjective qualities I’ve always admired about Colby students is that they seem to me to be a glass-half-full sort of crowd. And this week has proven that to be true.

Old thoughts on the Wait List

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:34:05 GMT

I must confess at the outset that I was away last week on a completely frivolous vacation. After the unrelenting pace of the application reading season, I had developed an overwhelming urge to get out of Dodge for a serious change of pace. Luckily the airlines were cooperating with some excellent last minute fares so I took off a day before the decision letters were mailed. It was just what the doctor ordered, and I returned feeling like a new person.

This is my fourth day back in the office and although I do feel rejuvenated by my short absence, there is a huge amount to be accomplished this month. We are holding three large on-campus open houses, and we expect a considerable number of visitors both during the week following Easter/Passover, as well as the following week (school vacation in Maine and Massachusetts). There are a number of off-campus events for accepted students around the country, and spring college fairs are also beginning.

In addition to various projects awaiting my attention, I had a mountain of e-mail in my In-box upon my return, much of which concerns the decision letters, especially for students on the wait list. Rather than rework the post I did on this topic last year, I am opting to direct interested readers to that entry via this link. The thrust is the same, although this year, we are less certain than ever about how we may utilize the wait list, given current economic conditions.

So it is still just as busy as ever in Lunder, but the great thing about this job is its cyclical nature. We’re working hard all the time, but the work itself changes by the season, or the month, or sometimes the week. There is never a dull moment!

Alive and Well

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:03:30 GMT

Earlier this week, one of our student receptionists took an incoming call from someone who was concerned about my well-being. Apparently this person is a regular reader of this blog and was worried because I’d been silent in this space for over a month. I am touched to know that anyone is paying attention that closely!

In fact, I am alive and well, but only in the last few days have I emerged into the light. This is because we have finally, FINALLY surfaced above the intensity of the application reading season. Even thought there is a great deal of frantic activity going on in the office with lots of evening and weekend hours still to be put in, the fact is that I don’t have to go home every single evening and read files after dinner. Today’s Friday, and this will be the first weekend in 2009 that I will not spend a significant amount of my time reading essays and analyzing test scores and GPA’s. It is as if a pall has lifted.

I certainly don’t mean to imply that reading applications is a complete drag. It’s not. When I open a file, there is always a sense of anticipation, even when I am opening the six-hundred-seventh folder. Students tell us some amazing stories in their essays, and occasionally some even more incredible things come out in the recommendations. I particularly enjoy the diversion of looking at someone’s art portfolio or watching a performance on a DVD (competitive ballroom dancing, anyone?). It’s just that there are SO MANY of them!

The other thing that’s challenging about reading season is that life goes on while we wade through the stacks of applications, whether we want it to or not. The problem with this is that while life is happening, it is slowing down our ability to read files. I’ll describe one particularly challenging week during which my productivity struck new lows.

It began on a Sunday night with a snow storm. My husband and I made it safely home from Sugarloaf (remember: we like snow) and I sat down in my usual spot in the living room to read a few more files. On this particular night, it was warm enough that the snow was especially wet and heavy so at around 9:30 when the lights flickered and then went out, we were not surprised. Heavy snow is more likely to bring down tree limbs and wipe out the power lines. We are well situated for this, however, since we have a couple of wood stoves, a gas range, and town water (as opposed to a well), so we just got out the kerosene lamps and I continued reading.

On Monday morning, the precipitation had ended (I say precipitation because the snow had turned to light rain and then back to snow while we slept) so Dave and I got to work with the snow blower and the shovel and the roof rake to clear the accumulation. There were tree limbs down everywhere but the roads were relatively clear although the driving was slow. I finally got to the office at around 11:00 and immediately went to the Diamond building next door to shower. Occasionally throughout the day I called home to see if the answering machine would pick up, indicating that the power was back, but it was not to be.

Long story short: the power was out for 48 hours. The downside: reading applications by lamp light gets to be pretty challenging. The upside: we didn’t lose the contents of our freezer.

On Wednesday, I went to work a much happier camper, having had my shower at home. That evening, we had a meeting here in Lunder House with a group of students and part way through it, I got a call from my husband with some bad news: our home had been broken into during the day. Luckily, the place had not been ransacked, but a few things were missing and the door and its frame were significantly damaged. I will not go into the details, but suffice it to say that I did not get any reading done that day nor for several days afterwards. My concentration was shot.

All in all, that was a tough week and I know you understand why I didn’t quite fit a blog entry in. Of course the files didn’t exactly go away while I wasn’t reading them, so I played catch-up in the ensuing weeks (and the blog went by the boards). But I’m back – for the moment, anyway. Actually, I leave on Tuesday for a week’s vacation so you may not hear anything from me for awhile again. But rest assured: I am alive and well.

Star(fish) Update; now back to business

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:12:11 GMT

I’ll begin with a little photographic evidence that Tendai has indeed arrived at Colby, and as you can see, he is all smiles. Within a week, he had already acquired a Colby letter jacket, a gift from one of his new fans. The group shot shows a few of us in Lunder House who had a hand in his getting here: in the back on the left is our Financial Aid Director Lucia Whittelsey (she of the starfish metaphor) and on the right is Carleen Nelson who dispatched the I-20 form. That’s me in front with Tendai. There were many others who were a part of the effort, and we are all thrilled at the outcome – but no one is more thrilled than Tendai.

The excitement has abated, which is good since there is a lot to be done. As usual, I am way behind in my application reading, and over the weekend, I had my first anxiety dream of the reading season. As I recall, I wasn’t about to be fired or anything but it was one of those nightmares where I was far away from the office with an application that the Dean needed in a hurry for a meeting and I’d missed the train and had somehow lost pieces of the file – you know the story. As of yet, I have not lost any applications or pieces thereof, but if you could see my desk you’d wonder why not.

Part of my responsibility includes reading some of the international applications and I’ve found that I am more efficient if I sort them by country and then by school. One day last week I was trying to organize them and the top of my desk was not up to the task. My colleague Kathy Stevens thought my solution was pretty funny and recorded it for your pleasure.

One of the reasons that I get bogged down in my reading is that I often find myself getting completely absorbed in the stories contained inside those yellow and red folders. Some students are better writers than others, of course, but I have read some wonderful essays, including the one by the girl whose father died of AIDS, and on the other hand, the tell-all tale of the boy whose first reading experience resulted in a harrowing experience: at the age of 5, he followed directions while visiting the public library when he saw the words “PULL HERE.” What he couldn’t read were the words that followed: “in case of fire.”

We’re all feeling the effects of reading season both mentally and figuratively. We long for a professional masseuse to come in every couple of days and massage the knots out of our necks and shoulders from the hours of sitting hunched over the folders (we call the condition App Neck, as opposed to Tennis Elbow). But we ‘re all in it together, and that helps.

OK, back to work.

Starfish

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 22:18:53 GMT

While reading applications certainly occupies most of our time in the winter, there are other things that need attending to, like the workings of various committees, publication projects, planning open house events for accepted students after the decisions have been mailed, etc. Those are the routine tasks, but there is also the unexpected. For the past two and a half weeks, I have been working on a project that seemed unlikely to conclude successfully but it was worth a shot. I am sitting here on Cloud 9 at the moment because I’ve just gotten word that it has panned out after all. Herein lies the tale:

Last year we accepted a very fine student from Zimbabwe named Tendai. He was completing his high school education in the first graduating class at the United World College of Costa Rica (and if you don’t know what the UWC’s are, they’re worth investigating at the very least because Colby has a good number of UWC graduates in our student body. Click here for information.). In May, we received a note from Tendai very politely declining Colby’s offer of admission in favor of Harvard’s, and we thought that was the end of Tendai as far as Colby was concerned.

In early September, however, I got an e-mail message from Tendai’s college counselor at the UWC, a Colby graduate named Greg Walsh. Greg told me that he had learned from other students that things had been very complicated for Tendai once he returned to Zimbabwe for the summer and that as a result he was not able to complete the various tasks he needed to accomplish before enrolling at Harvard; thus Harvard had let Tendai know that he needed to defer matriculating for a year. Greg was justifiably concerned about Tendai given the desperate situation in Zimbabwe. I shared this concern, particularly after my trip to Southern Africa for Colby in early July. While I was there, violence erupted in South Africa against illegal immigrants, the vast majority of whom are Zimbabweans seeking any manner of means to meet basic needs. That was just about the time that Zimbabwe’s government “redenominated” the Zimbabwean dollar owing to an inflation rate percentage running in the millions.

Greg was a bit anxious because he was had not heard from Tendai directly, and communication through others was spotty at best. An orphan, Tendai is accustomed to fending for himself, but given the circumstances in his country safety is a legitimate worry. Greg suggested that if Colby was still interested in Tendai, perhaps we might let him know that it could be possible for him to enroll after all.

At that point, however, the incoming students had already been on campus for nearly a week and classes were due to begin in a day or two. Our Dean, Parker Beverage, wanted to be sure that if Tendai were to come to Colby, he’d start on solid footing at the beginning of the semester with proper orientation to the college. And so, after consultation with other senior staff, Parker authorized me to extend an offer to Tendai for the second semester.

I never received a reply. To be honest, I wasn’t too surprised, given the state of affairs in Zimbabwe, the difficulties others were having in communicating with Tendai, and after all, how interested would he be in giving up Harvard for Colby?

But then on January 12, I did hear from Tendai. He apologized for not having responded to my message in September, describing the communications difficulties he had been having and noting that a number of messages were simply missed. He had already written to our Admissions Office to reapply to Colby for the fall of 2009, and he included a lengthy résumé of his activities since returning to Zimbabwe six months earlier. But now he wondered if there was any possibility that he might be able to enroll for the second semester even at that late date.

I went back to Parker to broach this idea, but it seemed utterly impossible. In the space of three weeks, Tendai would have to receive from Colby the I-20 immigration form necessary to secure his visa from the U.S. Embassy in Harare, and then apply for the visa itself, typically a lengthy and challenging process. Then and only then could a ticket be arranged. And even if that were possible, would there be a bed available for him on campus, not to mention space in appropriate courses, given that registration had occurred months ago?

But after checking with many offices on campus, it was determined that there was a bed, there were classes, and it was worth a try, especially in light of the continually deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe. The following day I was able to reach Tendai by phone at his home some distance from Harare where he lives with his sister. He enthusiastically confirmed that he was seriously interested in pursuing enrolling at Colby even at the expense of foregoing Harvard. And he then told me of another obstacle: his passport had been stolen.

The whole thing now seemed completely beyond the realm of possibility: replacing a passport in a country where the government isn’t functioning; a high likelihood that we could not get his I-20 form delivered to him even if using a reputable service; securing an interview at the U.S. Embassy for his visa hearing; and perhaps most difficult of all, Tendai had to find the equivalent of $130 for the visa fee. Then and only then could travel arrangements be made for an itinerary that presented plenty of challenges by itself.

In the past two weeks, I have worked together daily with Lucia Whittelsey, Director of Financial Aid, and we have leaned on at least a dozen others on campus to accomplish many steps entailed in this project. E-mail communication with Tendai has been erratic, and sometimes we have relied on his friends in Zimbabwe and here in the U.S. plus Greg Walsh in Costa Rica to strategize on how to make this happen. Tendai has proven himself to be incredibly resourceful, ultimately having to secure a ride to the facility where his replacement passport was printed in order to claim it. The I-20 sent by FedEx took a week to arrive, and there was a false delivery, but arrive it eventually did. I don’t know how Tendai rounded up the money for the visa fee, but I suspect he will be working a fair number of hours at his campus job this semester to repay those who helped him. The easiest part actually turned out to be the visa hearing itself: it took place this past Monday at 8:00 a.m. in Harare, and I had an e-mail message from Tendai dated at 8:20 a.m. saying he’d been approved.

The airline ticket was a bit dicey since the usual route through Johannesburg would require an expensive transit visa, but an itinerary was found through Nairobi and Amsterdam that landed Tendai in Boston this morning at 10:45. Then there was the matter of getting him the final 180 miles to Waterville. Enter the Colby Alumni Admissions Committee from which a willing volunteer emerged: Marty Womer ’75. Marty is an attorney who lives in Saco, just about mid-way between Boston and Waterville, and he not only agreed to meet Tendai’s plane but he also brought a winter coat and warm sweaters to our newest student (who, naturally, had never seen snow).

Internet communications failed us in the last several days and we had not heard anything from Tendai since Wednesday when his itinerary was finalized; Lucia and I could only hope that he was on that plane out of Harare on Friday even as more terrible news emerged from Zimbabwe: cholera infection numbering more than 60,000; 50% of the population in need of food aid; 94% unemployment; the government abandoning its currency [sources: news stories from NPR and BBC].

Today I couldn’t get my mind off of Tendai. Finally in the early afternoon, I called Marty’s cell phone and was ecstatic to talk to Tendai himself – he sounded incredibly excited to be in Maine at last, although they were still en route to Colby, having taken a detour to drive past Walker’s Point, site of the Kennbunkport White House. Wahoo!

Early on in these proceedings, Lucia reminded me that there’s a schmaltzy adage about someone walking along a beach littered with countless starfish, stopping every few feet to toss one of the stranded creatures back into the sea. A passer by asks him why he bothers to do this: there are so many starfish that it can’t possibly make any difference. The starfish chucker replies as he throws another one back, “It makes a difference to that one.” Although I am cynical about stories like that, I must admit that Lucia and I do feel as if we’ve made a difference for this one, and it feels pretty good.

Obamarama

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 02:44:04 GMT

Mark Jablonowski '10 managed and designed Obama campaign's ground-breaking technology

On Tuesdays and Thursdays throughout the winter, I stay at home to read applications. Beginning right after New Year’s Day, I transform part of our living room into a comfortable but efficient review station where I can spread out the piles of files. I gain an hour and a half by eliminating my lengthy commute to Waterville, but more importantly, I can focus much better away from the interruptions of the office.

This past Tuesday, however, I found it impossible to stay on task. The inauguration festivities sucked me away to the television intermittently throughout the day, and of course I was glued to the tube during the ceremony itself. I was so caught up in the substance and meaning and emotion of the proceedings that by the end, when the Reverend Doctor Lowery joyfully commanded, “Say Amen!” I was on my feet saying “Amen!” (much to the consternation of the dog). After a bit more time, I dragged myself back to the applications, checking in on the luncheon and parade preparations now and then. I watched the President and First Lady stroll a ways down Pennsylvania Avenue, read a bit more, and tuned back in just in time to see the band from Punahou, the President’s high school, come by the reviewing stand. We have some Punahou students at Colby (and my cousins went there), and it was great to see Obama’s already broad smile widen for his alma mater. I did manage to read my quota for Tuesday, but only barely.

On campus, there’s a lot of excitement about various Colby connections to the festivities; in this post, I will mention only three. The first is Doris Kearns Goodwin ’64. Her lively commentary on NBC throughout the festivities provided me (and the rest of the country) with meaningful context and significance on this momentous day. Of course President Obama’s cabinet selection has been compared at length to that of President Lincoln as described in Goodwin’s most recent book, Team of Rivals.

The second would be Emmett Beliveau ’99. Involved with Obama’s campaign since the fall of 2006, Beliveau’s talents were utilized as events planner extraordinaire, and right after the election he was named executive director of the Presidential Inauguration Committee. One of the most amazing parts of the day for me was watching throngs of people on the mall and on the parade route, in addition to a program that ran pretty much like clockwork, and Beliveau was the guy who headed the show. You can read more about it in the Wall Street Journal at . Now he’s moved into a position called Director of Advance, which means he’ll orchestrate all of the President’s events outside of the White House, both at home and abroad.

Finally, there’s Mark Jablonowski ’10. I’ve never met any of my three Colby heroes of the day in person, but I have met Mark on paper: I was one of the readers of his application three years ago, and it was memorable. First of all, he’s from Anchorage, and it’s always fun to read applications from farther afield. I also remember that it was a little lopsided in that he was, overall, a very good student but he really shone in some areas. Finally, he had rave reviews in all of his recommendations for his behind-the-scenes contributions to the school, from theater tech crew to trouble-shooting the school’s computer networks. Once he was accepted at Colby, I lost track of him but he has resurfaced in a big way. Right after completing his first year, Mark volunteered for the Obama primary campaign in New Hampshire during the summer, doing the mundane but important tasks that often occupy first-time workers. His technical skills quickly came to light, however, and he hasn’t looked back since. Officially on leave from Colby, Mark rose to be IT Special Projects Manager following Obama’s nomination, and was the Chief Techincal Officer for the Inauguration. There’s been a lot of buzz in the last 24 hours about the Presidential Blackberry, and I’m guessing that Mark’s been in on that project as well. Check out from Colby magazine for lots more details. Let’s just say that as one of the readers of Mark’s Colby application, I think we came to the right decision.

There are numerous other White Mules who have made significant contributions to the election and the current Presidency, and several professors whose expertise has been recognized in the course of commentary on the campaign and the new administration. I can’t close this post, however, without mentioning Waterville native son, George Mitchell, who has been asked to follow his success in the Northern Ireland peace accords with a similar initiative in the Israel – Palestine crisis. While it’s true that Mitchell graduated from another Maine college down the road in Brunswick, he was born and raised in Waterville and his father worked as a custodian at Colby. He returns to campus for the lecture series named in his honor; it focuses on international affairs and the most recent speaker was Madeleine Albright. He may have graduated from Bowdoin, but we had him first! And we all feel great pride that he has been recognized once again for his diplomacy and leadership skills which developed from humble beginnings here in Waterville.

But now, back to the business of discovering the next Jablonowski…

Ice Box

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 16:53:53 GMT

I don’t mean to discourage all of you who hail from warmer climes farther south, but it is a brutally cold day today. We’re in the midst of a classic January cold snap and I am at Sugarloaf where I spend a fair bit of time in the winter. According to the thermometer, it’s 0 degrees F outside. I am still in my fleece pajamas, however, composing this long overdue blog post and thinking about the large stack of application folders that I brought up here this weekend. This is my winter weekend routine: arrival late on Friday at Sugarloaf where my husband is on the Ski Patrol, ski half a day on Saturday and Sunday, and read applications the other half of the day, head home on Sunday evening. The great thing about it, though, is that when the weather doesn’t cooperate, I can hang out in cozy comfort. I confess to being a fair weather skier, and while there is brilliant sunshine outside, the temperature today qualifies as foul weather in my book.

In the six weeks since my last post, a lot of water has passed under the bridge. (Point of information for those of you From Away: streams do not freeze solid in the winter in these parts; there is always a current beneath the ice. In fact, my small hometown of Bowdoinham is a destination for smelt fishing, which involves sitting in a woodstove-heated shack on the ice of a tidal river, drinking beer and fishing through a hole in the ice for the little smelts that run with the tides. But I digress.) The Early Decision round 1 application cycle is over and we are much of the way through reading the ED II applications. Our mailroom has been bursting with academic credentials and other admissions materials, and our Processing Team has been working overtime to sort, record, post and file this information. [IMPORTANT NOTE: do not panic if you believe a component of your application is missing! It will take us at least another week to ten days before we are caught up with this process.] Jan Plan is in full swing on campus and off (see the most recent Photo Gallery on insideColby here). People are playing in the snow (see references to Sugarloaf and smelt fishing.)

We have all been concerned about how the current economic situation might affect families and their education plans. Colby is certainly an expensive proposition, and although we have excellent financial aid we were concerned that many potential applicants might decide that Colby is simply out of reach. Happily this has not proven to be the case. Our total application numbers at this point appear to be down slightly from 2008, but coming in at almost exactly the same point as 2007. Even more importantly, our Board of Trustees made the critical decision at its meeting in October to fully maintain our financial aid budget and policies. While Colby’s endowment has taken a hit during this downturn, it has not been of the same magnitude as that of the markets in general. The College’s conservative fiscal management philosophy is serving us well in these tough times, and here in the Admissions and Financial Aid Office, we are grateful that we will not have to alter our practices.

On a personal note, I spent half of the six weeks since my last post traveling with my family in China. Our younger son is studying abroad there this year so we took the opportunity for a visit over the holidays. Our older son, who lives and works in Munich, joined my husband and me on a trip that exceeded our considerable expectations in every way. I must tip my hat in gratitude to Phil Brown, a Colby economics professor who specializes in China. He’s there right now, leading a study tour along the Yellow River as he has done several times previously during Jan Plan. Knowing that he has spent extensive time there, I contacted Phil when planning our own trip and he connected me with his Beijing contact who takes care of the Jan Plan travel arrangements and so Mr. Gao assisted our family on a much smaller scale with some of our logistics. We barely scratched China’s gigantic surface but had a fantastic time doing it together as a family. The best part was being in the hands of the baby of our family (OK, he’s 21, but still), whose Mandarin skills knocked our socks off. His facility with the language certainly brought us better service in restaurants and hotels, not to mention better prices in the markets, and it seemed to wow the locals too.

One of the reasons that I came to work at Colby is the international influence here; on a personal level, this is one little illustration of its benefits. (Another one is the Introduction to American Thanksgiving “course” that my husband and I held at our home for 5 international students: huge fun, but that’s another story.) So while we are in this beautiful, cold spot of the world, we have access to many corners of the globe. And on that note, I’m actually thinking of donning a lot of layers and taking a run or two.

Change of Season on Mayflower Hill

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 20:44:45 GMT

Last week as I was driving to work on I-95 for the first time in weeks, I passed numerous enormous semi-trucks heading south bearing loads of Christmas trees. It’s a common sight here in Maine just before Thanksgiving, and I was delighted to see it mostly because it was a sign that I am finally Home. I’d just returned a few days before from 15 days of Colby-related travel in Europe, and as I drove north I calculated that I had spent 39 of the previous 61 days on the road for Colby. I love to travel, and this year things seemed to go pretty much without a hitch (discounting the fact that my ATM card didn’t work the entire time I was in Europe, which made for some creative financial maneuvers). But one of the things that makes travel great for me is knowing that Maine is waiting when it’s all over, and the south-bound Christmas trees signaled that in a festive, home-for-the-holidays kind of way.

Now as I look outside on the 1st of December, the spire of Miller Library is enshrouded in fog and the green lawns are covered in soft, rapidly melting snow, a far cry from the reds and oranges on the trees back in mid-September. Things inside Lunder House have changed as well: we have a few interviews in the book each day, so we admissions officers spend most of our time sequestered in our offices, reading Early Decision applications. This process feels new and exciting to us at this point, and the ED numbers are never overwhelming so it’s fun.

On the other hand, the Processing Team is running full steam ahead. The backbone of this group consists of five colleagues: Penny, Beth, Tracie, Kathy and Ellen, with additional help from our receptionists Mary and Martha, as well as a crack team of student workers. Beth is the first line of defense for application materials in paper form, since she runs the mailroom and oversees the fax machine. Penny is the office manager who supervises all the functions including compiling applications, downloading electronic material, etc. with considerable assistance by Tracie, Kathy and Ellen. (This is a simplified rendition of a complex scenario, believe me.)

Several weeks ago, Beth and Penny put their heads together and came up with a few tips for applicants. Rather than rework their ideas, I present them to you as submitted by Beth. Following these suggestions will make their work easier, and will increase the likelihood that when you check your application status on-line, you’ll get the welcome news that it’s complete.

Our goal is to decrease mistakes and speed up processing time. Our most common frustration (and mistake!) is not being able to figure out the student's exact name, thus not being able to match up materials with applications. Here’s what students can do to avoid problems:

1. Be sure your full name is on EVERYTHING you send us.

2. Illegible handwriting -- if we can't read it, we can't enter it correctly :-) Most Common Application cover sheets for teacher recommendations, etc. are computer generated. Handwritten sheets are often difficult (or impossible) to read.

3. If you use a nickname, or have any alternative names that might appear on your application materials, be sure to let us know. Whenever you can, include your middle name or initial. Be consistent and specific -- if you have 2 last names, make it very clear to us. Use a hyphen, or don't. But let us know which name(s) you go by. The more identifying info we have, the better.

4. Abbreviations -- "Wtvl" is obviously "Waterville" to those of us who live around here, but we wouldn't expect someone in Wyoming to know what "Wtvl" means. Abbreviations common to one area might not be recognized as abbreviations by "outsiders." For example, "Hunt, NY" will be considered "Hunt, NY" unless someone figures out it's really "Huntington."

5. Don't worry about presentation: fancy packaging, plastic sleeves, binders, folders, etc. None of this makes it to your application folder. Binders, sleeves, etc. are dismantled in the mailroom so that the materials will fit into your standard-sized file in the appropriate order. **Note -- arts supplements DO remain in their sleeves.

6. You don't need to send us copies of every award you've ever received. A list, similar to a résumé, is sufficient and easier to read. Copies of articles you've written are fine; entire magazines, newspapers, or books are a bit much (unless the entire publication is about you or by you).

7. Be patient. Depending on the volume of mail at the time that your application materials are received, it may take us from a few days to two weeks to process your materials after they arrive at our office. You can check on your application and materials only after we receive your application. We may have your materials on hand, but they won't appear on-line until we receive the actual application, either electronically or by post.

So there you have it. And while I'm at it, kudos to the Processing Team for all they're doing now and all year long.

E.D. or Not E.D.: That is the question

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 22:29:22 GMT

First of all, my apologies for the long hiatus between posts. I have been on the road a lot more than I have been at home or in the office of late, and I feel as if I am trailing pieces of my life behind me, professionally and personally. Do let me know if you find anything with my name on it, wherever you may be.

So it’s that time in the cycle when Early Decision is really bearing down on students and their counselors. I first started thinking about this topic when I was in California earlier this fall, talking with my colleagues in various guidance offices about the tremendous pressures many of them feel from the colleges with their various ED plans. When Harvard and a few others decided to forego the Early Decision option, many people assumed that everyone would follow suit. It may be an appealing idea, but the fact is that Harvard can do whatever it wants because it’s Harvard. Other colleges have different sets of parameters and priorities, and there are many important reasons for continuing ED.

One of the challenges for students, parents and counselors is sorting out all these plans. A chief laments that I heard from counselors had to do with deadlines creeping ever earlier. One college, I was told, has an ED I deadline of November 1, unless the student plans to submit a portfolio or music audition CD in which case the whole application has to be complete and received by the college on October 8. The University of California system requires that students complete the application process between November 1 and November 30. There is the confusion of Early Decision (binding) vs. Early Action (not binding). I even had a mom tell me yesterday that one of our near neighbors has a policy of non-binding Early Decision. That was the first I’d heard of such a thing, so I checked on it, and it’s not the case. But it’s no wonder the poor mom was confused.

For me, the most compelling ED image of the fall was the look on the face of a young woman I was interviewing in California when she asked me about the advantages of applying ED. Often when I’m interviewing ED candidates, it’s clear that they have sold themselves on Colby. They’ve either been on campus and fallen in love with the place, or they’ve done so much research that they can practically recite the course catalog. Sometimes their enthusiasm is a little overwhelming even to me.

But this young lady was not in that category. She clearly had a sense for Colby but was still in the mulling-it-over stage, which was just fine back in early October when we met. Yet she was trying to discern what advantage she might gain by applying ED, and it was clearly upsetting her, as I could tell from the tears that momentarily welled up in her eyes. I’m guessing those tears were an expression of frustration with a hint of desperation.

For what it’s worth at this late date, here’s what I think about ED. [Disclaimer: this is the Dory Streett opinion, not the official Colby College opinion.]
1. It’s not for everybody. Don’t jump on this bandwagon just because you think everyone else is. They’re not.
2. If you find yourself measuring every college on your list against a certain school, then chances are good that applying ED to that school could be the right decision for you. (I refer to this as the Colby Yardstick.)
3. It’s true that you will have a bit of an advantage if you apply ED, but it’s not as great as you might think. The chief advantages are:
a. We know you will come if we accept you, and of course we want students who want us. This does not begin to compensate for a mediocre academic record, however.
b. When reading ED applications, we are fresh. We haven’t been reading applications for months. We always give each application three careful reads, but it’s a brand new process to us during the ED period.

This afternoon, I interviewed another young woman who had begun looking at colleges earlier than most and had thoroughly researched Colby. She had identified programs that matched her interests and understood quite a bit about the college environment. In a way, our interview was just a small loose end that she was tying up, because she is lucky enough to be at a point where she knows what she wants, and she knows she can get it at Colby. As we were discussing her decision to apply ED, she told me that one of her teachers had said that “choosing a college is like getting married.” It’s a terrific simile.

SoCal

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 03:02:08 GMT

Outside my hotel room window, the lights of the Westwood neighborhood in Los Angeles twinkle as they run up the foothills of the Santa Monica mountains. Sounds nice, right? So what am I doing typing this on a Saturday night in LA?

We’re on the road again. I flew out here ten days ago and have thus far have visited 28 high schools and 3 community organizations that assist first generation college-bound students. I’ve staffed a college fair, interviewed students at my hotels, hosted some alumni admissions volunteers for dinner, and spoken with others on the phone. I have checked into hotels in Pasadena, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles (twice), and later in the trip, I’ll be sleeping in Fountain Valley and San Diego. I have even been interviewed by the Los Angeles Times for a story about how changing demographics impact college recruitment efforts. Here’s a typical day, last Thursday:

8:30: appointment at Santa Monica High School. Unfortunately, I am staying in a hotel that won’t let guests park their own cars, and I end up waiting about 10 minutes for my rental to appear. I’m 10 minutes late for my appointment, but a couple of students wait for me anyway and we have an excellent conversation.

10:00: On time for my appointment at New Roads School in Santa Monica. Three students and the college counselor ask me all kinds of questions. One of the girls is an ice hockey player, a rarity in these parts.

I don’t have to be at my next appointment for 45 minutes after my meeting finishes at New Roads, so I head to the grocery store to buy a salad for lunch and lay in a few supplies so I can have breakfast in my hotel room in the morning. It’s mobbed at Trader Joe’s, but I manage to get out of there on time.

11:45: appointment at Palisades Charter High School. The power is out all over the school, so the accommodating counselors set me up with a table and chairs on a shady patch of lawn, and three students and I have a good conversation. Luckily the temperatures that exceeded 100 degrees for the previous two days are gone.

1:00: appointment at Archer School on Sunset Boulevard. I am waved in by the security guard and slide into the parking lot in the nick of time after a harrowing left turn into the driveway. Sunset Boulevard can be madness. Several students are on our mailing list but have other commitments; the one girl who is able to make the meeting had already scheduled an interview with me for this coming Saturday, but we decide to go ahead with it while I am there instead.

2:10: my school visits over for the day, I head back to Pacific Palisades (turning right out of the Archer driveway onto Sunset, thankfully) and eat my now warm salad on Will Rogers Beach. I take a leisurely drive down the Pacific Coast Highway back to Santa Monica and decide to see if I can sneak in early to my next appointment and borrow a computer for a few minutes to check my e-mail.

3:30: arrive at One Voice, a community-based organization that supports bright, motivated, low income students from some of the toughest high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and helps them to become the first in their families to go on to college. The familiar staff there is lively, warm, and accommodating, and they hook me up with a computer until it’s time to meet with the students who have signed up to see me at 4:30.

6:00: head out from One Voice to return to my hotel, 3.8 miles east on Wilshire Boulevard, according to Mapquest. My traffic luck runs out, and this little drive takes 40 frustrating minutes. I listen to the Vice Presidential Debate as it is broadcast live, and this does nothing to decrease the frustration.

7:00: meet two loyal Colby alumni who help us tremendously with our admissions efforts in Southern California, and treat them to dinner at the hotel restaurant. A number of other area alums were invited, but I wasn’t able to give them much notice, and we all live pretty busy lives. We had a very nice evening during which I talked about a number of recent developments at Colby, and I vow to do this every time I come to SoCal.

9:15: Head up to my room and take off my shoes. Power up the computer to finish my e-mail. It will not let me log in. Time to call it a day.

In addition to meeting students and spreading the word about Colby, the other benefit to visiting all these schools is for me to better understand their populations and curricula, as well as to get to know the staff, and let them get to know me. As the Colby admissions staff member responsible for this region, I’ll read all the applications from these parts and it behooves me to understand the schools and various influences on them. I try to mix it up a little and visit some different schools each year, but after five years of travel in Southern California, I now have more schools on my radar than I could possibly visit even if I were out here for four weeks. California is important to us: our fifth best represented state at Colby. Given the forecast for a relatively steep decline in the number of high school students in the Northeast in the coming years, it will become even more important.

So here I sit on Saturday night, banging out a blog post. Tomorrow I’ll take part in a three hour event at a local community college together with 9 other liberal arts colleges, and then I’ll head down to Orange County in order to visit 4 schools on Monday, followed by several interviews. On Tuesday I’ll make my way to San Diego, visiting schools along the way, and my last school visit on this trip will be on Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday I’ll fly home after 15 days. Southern California is an interesting place, but Maine will be a sight for sore eyes when I step off that plane.

Happy Trails!

Tales from the Road

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:28:36 GMT

To the average prospective student visiting Lunder House these days, the place appears pretty quiet. Gone are the massive throngs of the summer; instead, observers will find admissions colleagues purposefully going about their business in their offices. If you were to look more closely, however, you’d detect a note of frenzy, perhaps even panic. We’re all busily constructing complex travel plans, coordinating accompanying mailings, calling and e-mailing guidance counselors far and wide: travel season is upon us, and no matter how far in advance we begin the planning process, these few weeks are always wild.

A stroll down the corridor will reveal that more than half of the offices are empty. That’s because all of us have already been on at least one trip, perhaps a short shakedown cruise of a day or two, but some of us have been out for a good long time. The winner thus far is Kim Cheah who returned to campus on Monday for the first time in nearly three weeks after an Asia swing that took her from Hong Kong to Columbo, and many points in between. En route, she visited a variety of schools in at least six countries, interviewed many students, and meet with loyal Colby alumni who help us in the admissions process.

Another road warrior just returned from a foray to North Carolina had a couple of good stories to tell. Janice Kassman, our former Dean of Students, has been lending us her considerable expertise in our outreach efforts for the last couple of years. On her last night in Charlotte, she boxed up her remaining admissions materials and addressed the package to herself in care of our office, dropping it off at the front desk at about 9:00 pm. She returned to her room, settled into her jammies and decided to check her e-mail before calling it a night. Lo and behold, there was a message from Emma James, Colby ’05, asking if she was staying in the same hotel. It seems that moments after Janice dropped off her package at the reception desk, Emma checked in and spied the box with the telltale address. Needless to say, Janice hopped back into her clothes and spent the next several hours catching up with Emma.

That’s a great story, but Janice topped that one with an even better Colby coincidence tale. Janice’s husband Larry, who graduated from Colby, is an avid outdoorsman and he was recently flyfishing in Yellowstone National Park in Montana with his friend, Colby music professor Steve Saunders, who is on sabbatical this year. It was a fun, albeit routine, fishing expedition until they heard a commotion coming from well behind them in the parking lot. They turned to see a number of people trying to alert our fishermen to a rather large and imposing grizzly bear who had claimed some territory between the river and the parking lot. Grizzlies in national parks are somewhat unpredictable owing to human interference, and it was clear that the Larry and Steve needed to get out of the way, but there was no clear route of escape. Before long, a rifle-toting park ranger cautiously made his way to the bank of the river and told the men to follow him on an alternate trail. He had no intention of harming the bear but had the rifle just in case. It was a bit of a trek back to safety and the three struck up a conversation:
“Where are you from?”
“We’re from Maine.”
“Oh, I went to college in Maine.”
“Where did you go?”
You can see where this is going: the rifle-bearing rescuer in the ranger hat was Mitch Hauptman, Colby ’00, a former student of Steve Saunders.

One of the things we’ve learned since Janice came to work with us is that it’s rare to be able to top her stories. But travel season breeds travel tales (although rarely involving grizzly bears) and if anything really good happens to me while I’m on the road, I’ll be sure to pass it along in these pages. Hope to see you out there.

Lively Place and Quiet Space

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:09:05 GMT

Classes started two days ago, and it is great fun to encounter familiar faces all across campus. I am beginning my fifth year at Colby, so the first students that I had a hand in recruiting are now seniors. In particular, I am proud of some of my California crew. I helped to bring this year’s student body president to Colby, and also the first Colby student to spend a full year studying in St. Petersburg, Russia: for the first semester, she participated in Colby’s program, but she designed her own curriculum for the second semester and attended the university there on her own. There are others, too, returning from abroad: from Tanzania, Chile, Germany and the UK. While they are excited to be back on Mayflower Hill, they have also experienced the world in new ways and are changed people. That’s the rewarding thing about this work: watching the potential turn into growth.

At the same time, there are expectant new faces all over the campus as well. I was particularly glad to run into Chishala, whom I met in Swaziland in June, 2007; she made it to Colby in one piece in spite of missed flights and unexpected itinerary changes. About the time that Hurricane Gustav approached Florida, our own Gustav arrived at Colby from Denmark via Norway and Sierra Leone, full of ideas for more effective anti-malarial mosquito nets and other innovations that he’ll explore in the Physics department in the coming years.

So the campus is buzzing with students and faculty not quite settled in just yet, but a few of my fellow Lunder-ites and I visited a serene spot in Miller Library today, an effort initiated by our new colleague, Bill Jack, as he continues to learn as much as possible about the College. Colby’s Special Collections are housed in a suite of tranquil rooms just off the busy main lobby area in Miller Library. Pat Burdick, the Special Collections Librarian, showed us some of the fascinating things she cares for, including the first medal awarded in the modern Olympic Games, Thomas Hardy’s chair (complete with a photo of Hardy sitting in it with his cat in his lap), a diorama of the old downtown Colby campus, and book art created by an unusual artist/physicist named Bern Porter, Colby ’32.

Books, of course, are at the heart of the Special Collections, and there are wonderful representations of Hardy’s works, the Healey Collection of Irish Literature, Maine authors such as Edwin Arlington Robinson, and first editions of James Joyce. Speaking of first editions, Pat brought out a very, very old book from the 1400’s, before the invention of the printing press, when books were commissioned by those who could afford them. I admit that it was a thrill to be able to touch the delicate parchment and see where the scribe had made corrections to his work.

Pat told us that about ten courses each semester make use of the varied materials in the Special Collections, and they come from across the curriculum. But students are encouraged to learn about and utilize this fascinating resource on their own as well. The physical space that houses the collections invites its visitors to envision themselves as scholars. It’s a Colby wonder.

But now outside my window the Friday afternoon sun is streaming down on the Colby Green where the Ultimate Frisbee team is practicing, students are jogging by on Mayflower Hill drive, and faculty members are beginning to depart, sun roofs open on this warm late summer day. On Monday, the brand-newness of the semester will have worn off a little, but for now it still gleams.

Sleepy Campus, Busy Office -- and Bats

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:26:35 GMT

After a summer chock-full of camps and conferences, the Colby campus has a sleepy air. Just below this, though, is a sense of rising anticipation for the beginning of the academic year. There were weeks in the past two months when we hosted as many as 1,000 participants in sports camps, ophthalmology conferences, tax school, and Great Books seminars; it’s certainly not the same atmosphere as the regular academic year but the campus was pretty lively. Yesterday, thought, I took a walk up to Miller Library and didn’t encounter a soul except for one stalwart groundskeeper on his big riding mower.

But meanwhile in Lunder House, we’re bursting at the seams as students and their families rush from campus to campus before the academic year begins. We’re moving the twice-daily information sessions to a larger classroom space in the nearby Diamond building, both to accommodate the crowds as well as to keep them cool, since the air conditioning in our usually more than adequate living room space can’t keep up with the added heat from all those bodies once we’ve packed them in and closed the doors for the session. Our receptionist Mary Rector took a photo last Friday of all the interview cards lined up on the front desk in readiness for a time slot in which every single admissions officer was slated for an interview. Our enormously energetic tour guides are beginning to flag a bit as the tours grow larger each day; even though we’ve had an influx of new blood (i.e. some other guides who were working elsewhere earlier this summer but now have joined us in Lunder for this busy period), there are a few students who have been with us straight through since the end of May. Back then, they were bored silly some days and went looking for extra things to do; now they’ve got a slightly glazed look in their eyes between tours as they rest up for the next group of 20+.

Just to add a little spice, we’ve had something of a bat theme this summer. Of course there’s the Dark Knight, but even before the movie’s release, our tour guides had christened their “office” the Bat Cave. It’s the large room on Lunder’s second floor whose usage changes with the seasons. During the winter when we are in the thick of reading applications, this room is the central repository for application folders. At a time when we are usually hunkered down in solitude with only the current batch of files for company, this room in Lunder becomes the place where we run into each other while swapping folders, and swapping a little conversation too. But this summer, it’s the Bat Cave where the tour guides hang out between tours, desk duty, and other random summer duties; when we’re looking for someone, we can usually find them there, checking FaceBook, listening to music on head phones, or doing the odd clerical task.

But one recent day, the Bat Cave unexpectedly migrated to the mailroom in the basement. A group of tour guides were there with a couple of my colleagues and me, pouring over some material in order to get student feedback on it. We’d been there for half an hour somewhat boisterously reviewing a variety of approaches to the project, when someone happened to look up and notice a corner near one of the windows where a tiny bat was sleeping peacefully, attached to a corner near the ceiling. Once we got over (A) the initial shock, and (B) the fascination of looking at the little creature, we marshaled a plan to evict the critter in the middle of its undoubtedly well-deserved sleep. No animals were harmed in the evacuation, I might add. I am actually quite fond of bats. I am in awe of their navigation abilities (although this one clearly missed its usual bed), and am grateful to them for eating mosquitoes.

As I finished my last interview yesterday afternoon, I was talking as usual to the parents of the young man. The family was from a different part of the country and as the conversation was wrapping up, the dad asked me if it was common at Colby to have such a bug-free day as we were experiencing that afternoon. The true answer is that bugs can be a problem in Maine at certain times of the day and in certain seasons, but not usually in places like college campuses where there are large expanses of well-maintained lawns, and that’s what I told him. But I couldn’t help thinking about our little visitor in the mailroom.

Fan Mail

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:45:37 GMT

From time to time, I receive an e-mail message from a parent offering some insight into Colby from a different perspective. Today I opened my In-Box to find the following message which I have altered slightly and now present to you (with the dad’s permission, of course). He’s in a unique position, looking backward and forward at the same time. Enjoy. --dgs

My daughter Felicity graduated in May and it was a wonderful day enjoyed by her extended family. As I begin the college search with my younger daughter I have been reflecting on our older daughter’s Colby experience. Looking back from the perspective of graduation at Felicity and two of her friends it is useful to try to recreate what they may have looked like to an admissions officer five years before. My thesis is that their successes were foreseeable from their high school record and bravo to the admissions team for seeing it. These three people presented different skill sets but my argument is that those patterns were well established in high school.

The first friend was a star in a small semi-rural high school, valedictorian, captain of multiple sports, and involved in all aspects of her community. At Colby she continued to shine, graduating with honors in her major, elected phi beta kappa, and accepted to several doctorate programs

The second worked hard in high school and always brought a high level of energy to everything. She made more of her opportunities through the application of herself to the task. In short, the desire and will to work was set in high school and continued through Colby. At Colby, she worked as a campus EMT first responder and was successful in her major. Her work at Colby landed her a prestigious and competitive internship. She has found a good job in her field.

The third friend was an all around great kid with a strong sense of community. Academically she was near the top but not the star. She has a true love of learning about all of the world. Her high school record showed dedication and compassion for others. She was very involved with Girl Scouts which she continued for four years at Colby. At Colby she was successful in her major, graduating in the middle of the group. She was very well liked by all of the faculty. She continued to be active in the Colby community in music, club sports, and inter-mural broomball. She worked for four years in the development office, a good placement for one as enthusiastic for Colby as she is.

I have always admired the ability of the admissions team to bring together individuals of varied talents in order to create a community. As I am sure you know, a class made up only of stars and without citizens would not be as rich an experience. I hope you can continue finding those gems of all around kids that bring so much.

Follow-up note: “Felicity’s” dad added a P.S. which is certainly worth sharing:
One short additional story that describes the students at Colby and makes my point about joiners. This story is second hand from my daughter.

In September 2004 an all campus email went out asking for Colby women to become involved with the Girl Scouts in Waterville. The writer said that Colby women had been Girl Scout leaders for many years but the leaders of a local troop had graduated. Would anyone from Colby take over? More than one hundred Colby women replied, more than thirty attended an informational meeting, and several enthusiastically agreed to become involved. So many wanted to help that a new troop of Brownie Girl Scouts was formed under the leadership of two freshman, one of whom was Felicity. Over the four years they meet twice a month and went on camping trips and field trips. One or two of the girls lived on campus as daughters of Colby employees but most were from the local community. They had as many as seventeen girls, fewer as they progressed through middle school. Last June the two leaders and recent Colby graduates returned to Waterville for one final camping weekend.

This is my favorite town/gown story and summarizes the commitment to community of Colby students. The cloistered college environment can be a wonderful academic retreat but it always seems odd not to have children about. These women found a way to stay connected.

Summer Visits

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:25:52 GMT

Yesterday I peeked into our lobby space during the morning information session and found that the room was completely packed. We’ve hit that point in the calendar when the number of visitors has picked up from the trickle of early summer to the steadily growing numbers that will continue to increase right through Labor Day. Mondays and Fridays are the busiest, often because families combine college visiting with vacation trips, and in case you didn’t know, Maine’s other tagline, besides our Dirigo motto, is Vacationland.

It’s actually a great strategy. Maine’s scenic recreation reputation is well-deserved, from our rugged, island-dotted coast to the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail at Mt. Katahdin, and right up into the French-speaking St. John River Valley. Just in Colby’s backyard are the Belgrade Lakes of “On Golden Pond” fame; in fact, Colby has a wonderful piece of property, the Colby-Hume Center, on Snow Pond. There are recreation opportunities galore in our beautiful state. This is good, because visiting colleges sometimes can be a little stressful on a family, so some hiking or paddling, or a swim or a sail, or just a nice lobster roll on a restaurant deck somewhere, can make the whole process a lot more pleasant.

Some people wonder whether it’s worthwhile to visit a college campus in the summer, since the activity and population is definitely different than it is during the academic year. It’s certainly true that the most accurate impression of what it would be like to be a Colby student is obtained when the place is in full-swing, but for many students it’s just not possible to do due diligence when they themselves are immersed in their own academic pursuits. After all, it’s important that students do well in high school so that they actually might be admitted to the colleges they’re trying to visit. The summer may be the only practical time to make a big trip, especially for families coming from a great distance. Yesterday, I spoke with a mother and daughter from Geneva, Switzerland and I interviewed a boy from Yarmouth, Maine, an hour and change from Waterville. In both cases, July 21 proved to be the best day for them to come to Colby.

So what will you find when you come in the summer? First of all, you’ll meet a group of incredibly hard working, knowledgeable and dedicated students who are working for us as summer tour guides and general admissions assistants. They hail from Maine to Nepal, and are rising sophomores to Super Seniors, so they’ll be able to give you a wide variety of impressions. Secondly, you’ll find a campus bustling with activities from professional conferences to summer sports camps. You can still hang out in the Cotter Union, visit the libraries, check out the brand new bookstore, or take a walk on the trails in the Arboretum. If you come on any day other than Monday, you should definitely take in our amazing art museum. You’ll see about 120 other Colby students around the campus; they’re here working in various capacities from research assistants to the grounds crew.

The majority of our visitors will take a tour and perhaps attend one of the information sessions – no reservations required. Many students will also book an interview in advance of their visits as well. (Click here for times and details.) If students are intrigued enough by what they find in the summer so that they end up applying to Colby, it’s a good idea to come back for a visit in April to take in the full academic experience. By then, their ideas will have continued to evolve and they will be nearing the point where they will have to decide where to enroll.

So come on up!

Return to Africa

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:40:36 GMT

Three weeks ago, I was in Burlington, Vermont, making a presentation with a colleague, Kristyn Hughes from Charlestown High School in Boston, at the annual conference of the New England Association for College Admissions Counseling. We were talking about working together to provide opportunities for bright and deserving students from under-served populations in inner city neighborhoods. An hour or so later, I checked my e-mail and discovered a message from my Director, saying that there was enough money remaining in our travel budget for the fiscal year, so would I be able to pull together another trip to Southern Africa prior to June 30?

Of course I jumped at the chance. I had had an amazing experience last year and I was eager for more. In a way, it was more of the work that Kristyn and I had been talking about at NEACAC: working with bright, deserving students from under-served populations, except these are kids from all over: urban and rural, largely African, all eager to be able to continue their studies in the U.S. As well, it was an opportunity for me to learn more about a region of the world that often seems very abstract, even to those who do their best to stay informed about the state of the world.

Ten days after reading that message, I was on my way. Because of the short notice and time constraints of our fiscal year, plus the differences in the academic calendar in the southern hemisphere and the occurrence of some national holidays, my visits were limited to schools and Swaziland and Botswana, and they had to be spaced such that I had a free long weekend in Swaziland. At first, this seemed incredibly self-indulgent and a questionable use of the college’s money, but I’m assuaging the latter by covering my own tourist-y expenses. As for the former, when is learning about a culture self-indulgent?

When I traveled to Swaziland last year, it was my first time in Southern Africa and I was closely cared for by colleagues at Waterford Kamhlaba United World College, staying in their guest house on campus for the duration of my visit and being driven from the airport and back by Waterford staff. This time, the guest house was full so I stayed at a hotel high on a hill in Mbabane, the Swazi capital, overlooking the Ezulwini Valley, a main tourist area. Riding in the back of a cab through the city each day on the way to Waterford, I began to see things differently. In my first visit, I was fascinated but uneasy at what I saw. My mind registered the contrasts between my surroundings and those at home, and my overall impression was poverty and struggle with issues of development, from technology to transportation. The cab rides paved the way for better understanding on my weekend discovery tour.

After my work was finished on Friday, I rented a tiny car and set off for three days of exploring Swaziland. I had planned my travels with plenty of help and reassurance from the kind people at Waterford with an eye toward getting out of the city and seeing some of the diverse landscapes and, of course, wildlife that Swaziland has to offer. Although I can’t say I ever felt entirely comfortable driving on the left side of the road, I was proud that I never went the wrong way around a traffic circle and that I was able to find my way from one side of this small country to the other.

Aside from the challenge of keeping left, the driving proved to be a key to better understanding this place. I passed through the industrial sections of Manzini and Matsapha, and acres of pineapple and sugar cane. Everywhere people were walking on paths through the country side as well as along the roadways, often carrying goods on their heads, from laundry to firewood, or pushing wheelbarrows loaded with groceries, fuel cans, building materials, and sometimes children. On Sunday, many of these pedestrians were dressed up for church, as Swaziland is a deeply Christian society. Cows, goats and pigs wandered along the shoulders, tended by youngsters or grazing on their own. Thankfully, there was never much traffic except for packed mini-busses and the occasional sleek Mercedes with South African license plates. Swaziland’s landscapes are often spectacular and the shortened days of the southern winter made for dramatic sunrises and sunsets.

The animals that I saw in a couple of game reserves were even more impressive than I had expected them to be. The king of Swaziland has identified conservation as an imperative not only because of the economic boost provided by tourism, but also because these majestic animals are central to the culture where the king is symbolized by the lion and the queen mother, who shares power, is represented by the elephant. It being winter, the number of tourists was small and the experiences within the reserves felt very intimate. It’s not as if Swaziland is as heavily visited as, say, nearby Krueger National Park in South Africa, afterall.

On my final day, I rode through Mbanane in the back of a cab once again to pay a visit to the Education Liaison at the U.S. Embassy, and I realized that I saw Swaziland through a different set of experiences. Certainly, this is a country facing tremendous challenges, including a 40% unemployment rate and nearly 40% HIV/AIDS infection rate. But now I could see many other layers, and the Swazis I had encountered face-to-face charmed me with their warmth and good nature. I have learned a lot on this trip about culture, geology, economics and public health. I’ve also met some wonderful students who, I hope, will give Colby serious consideration. We have as much to learn from them as they do from our curriculum.

Today I’m in Botswana visiting Maru-a-Pula School, which I wrote about last year when I was in Africa. I’m excited to meet another group of eager students with their own set of experiences to share today, but I’m also looking forward to tomorrow, when I begin the long journey home.

Coming and Going

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:58:29 GMT

On Friday, we said goodbye to our colleague Carolyn Plant, who is leaving Colby after two years to pursue a Master’s Degree in Higher Education at Harvard. It’s definitely the right move at the right time for her, but it’s a big loss for us. Carolyn has the best people skills of just about anyone I’ve ever met, and this was especially evident in the last several weeks when there was quite an uptick in the amount of socializing happening among the Lunder crowd. She’s particularly good at inviting herself to people’s houses and making us feel glad that she took it upon herself to do so. I managed to tag along for a few of these festivities and they were always fun, because fun seems to follow Carolyn around. We will certainly miss her, but we’ll work her into our information sessions when we talk about careers after Colby. When she graduated from Colby in ’04, Carolyn worked for a couple of years (in her history major, no less) at an educational organization in Boston called Facing History and Ourselves, and then followed her interest in higher education back to her alma mater. When she decided to pursue her masters, she was accepted everywhere she applied: Boston College, University of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan, Stanford and Harvard. We know she’ll be as successful there as she was here, and her classmates should start preparing now for a fun and active social life.

With each goodbye, there’s a hello. On July 1, we’ll be welcoming Carolyn’s replacement and we’re very excited about having him aboard in Lunder House. His name is Bill Jack, and he has just graduated from […wait for it…] Bates! His home town is Bowdoin, Maine (not the location of the college, but close), and our Dean was unable to resist noting that Bill is working his way up in the world by starting out in Bowdoin, graduating from Bates, and now coming to work at Colby.

The hiring process took up a substantial chunk of time during the month of May. We received numerous résumés and selected the best candidates for interviews. The interview process is a daunting one in which the candidate is asked to prepare a brief, mock information session about the college and present it to the assembled Lunder staff. While we do our best to be approachable and receptive, it’s clearly an audition situation that causes a serious case of nerves for every candidate. Most people manage to acquit themselves honorably, but with luck one or two really will rise to the occasion.

Such was the case with Bill, and it’s no wonder: he was president of the Bates student body for two years, an unusual feat at any college, and he also worked admissions office throughout his four years at Bates in progressively responsible capacities, ending as an Admissions Fellow which gave him experience in interviewing students as well as offering information sessions. We’re looking forward to having him bring a fresh perspective to Lunder even as he widens his horizons a bit.

These first two weeks of June have also seen a variety of other comings and goings. Our very interesting group of summer tour guides are settling in nicely. We’ve had our annual staff retreat, in which we began some planning for the upcoming recruiting season. With the Class of 2012 leveled out a comfortable number, we made the decision to release the Wait List. We’re in the midst of moving offices, which is a bit like musical chairs except that we have enough spaces for everyone so no one will be left out in the cold. I am moving upstairs to the cozy office recently occupied by the late, great Tom Kopp whose karma, I hope, continues to permeate the space. And there are a lot of vacations going on at the moment, which is a very good thing, although the few of us who are actually present in the office at the moment have many interviews scheduled each day. This morning I spoke with a girl from New York City who’s bilingual in French, and a Japanese boy who attends an English language school in Tokyo. In fact, I need to wrap this up because I have two more students on the docket for this afternoon. It’s all a part of the coming and going.

Commencement

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:48:22 GMT

May 25, Commencement Day, was as fine a day as one could hope for, and the campus never looked better. We arrived at Colby at 9:30, half an hour before the procession began, and of course every chair had been staked out long ago by excited family members. But we scored a wonderful perch on the balcony of Keyes, shaded by its portico and overlooking the festivities spread out on the terraced quad that cascades down the hill from Miller Library. My companion pirated some chairs from the vacant offices and we sat in comfort, entertained each time the light breeze sent apple blossom petals whirling from a nearby tree in a soft, fragrant blizzard. I wasn’t working at Colby when the Class of 2008 was recruited, but we came to the College together so seeing them move on was a milestone for me as well. I crossed paths with many wonderful members of the class along the way, but there are a few that I will especially miss.

Joerose Tharakan is one of them. She came to us from Cochin, India by way of Mahindra United World College. Joerose worked in our mail room in her first semester from which she engaged in her first ever snowball fight with then-mailroom supervisor Carol-lyn Greaves. (Read all about it in this Colby magazine article.) She stayed on campus one summer to work for us as a tour guide, and spent her junior year studying at London School of Economics followed by a summer internship in the financial sector there. When she came back to campus last fall, her year in London was evident in a new level of sophistication from a variety of perspectives. I loved watching her exuberant dancing in many acts in this year’s International Extravaganza, but especially the Indian numbers. It was great to meet her proud parents at a reception on the day before Commencement.

Tutu Musumali is Zambian and came to us from another United World College, the one in New Mexico, so she has spent the last six years in the U.S. I got to know Tutu when she worked for us a tour guide in the same summer as Joerose, and she stayed on as a student worker in the mailroom through her senior year. Last spring when I was planning my first-ever trip to Africa, I peppered Tutu with a variety of questions and she was incredibly patient to answer them without laughing at my ignorance. I will miss her down-to-earth sense of humor and general sweet good nature.

Christina Feng came to Colby from the Big Apple, and she’ll be returning there in the fall to begin her two-year stint with Teach for America. Being accepted into this program is quite an honor – like getting into a highly selective college, actually – and she’ll be terrific. Christina has energy to burn and a hugely generous soul, and it was wonderful to watch her mature as a scholar and an individual while she was at Colby. After spending the spring semester of her junior year at the University of Edinburgh, she returned to Maine for a summer internship at Pine Tree Legal Assistance where she became very interested in predatory lending practices, leading to an article she wrote about Maine’s Homeowner Protection Act that was published in the Maine Law Review. Read this insideColby article about her work.

And finally, there’s Stijn Ortega Coppin. My husband and I acted as Stijn’s host family after a fashion, which is to say that we really didn’t manage to have the kind of involvement with Stijn that we envisioned when we signed on to the program, but he was very patient with us. Stijn and Tutu were classmates at UWC USA, but he is the archetypal “third culture kid,” a term that refers to multi-national children who grow up in a global environment. His mother is Belgian, his father Venezuelan, and Stijn spent his childhood in Latin America and the Caribbean: Guatemala, Dominica, and Peru, to name a few locales. Yet he is equally comfortable in Europe, where he has spent a lot of time with his mom’s family. Stijn was great about coming to Lunder House in the winter to rescue me from the endless stack of applications by taking me to lunch in one of the dining halls. We had a great time skiing at Sugarloaf, and I always loved hearing about what he was doing in his classes.

When the Commencement festivities concluded, we returned the purloined chairs and headed out onto the lawns to congratulate the ecstatic graduates. I am already looking forward to next year when I will be able to watch some of the students I helped to recruit cross that literal and figurative stage. But it will be hard to beat the splendid day we enjoyed this last May.

Road Trip

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:31:44 GMT

Last week, I put 1100 miles on a screaming yellow rental car. Ordinarily I would avoid a vehicle of that obnoxious hue, but it offered leather seats, a sunroof, and XM radio. Given my itinerary those were certainly enticing options, and the territory I covered was more than just road miles.

I began on Monday by driving north from Waterville to Aroostook County, known here in Maine simply as The County. It’s the largest county east of the Mississippi, and it’s a place far removed from southern Maine in more ways than one. Waterville identifies itself as being in central Maine, but the fact is that if you drew a line midway between the most northern and most southern points in the state, Colby would be a good deal below it. I used to work in The County at the Maine School of Science and Mathematics (MSSM), a public, residential school for high school students seeking a more specialized and intensive education, so I have a particular fondness for Aroostook. It was as beautiful a spring day as I could hope for, and the drive north was spectacular. There’s a scenic turnout just north of Millinocket that offers a view of Mt. Katahdin, Maine’s highest peak and the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, and it was so gorgeous that I had to stop to admire it for a while. Four hours after leaving Waterville, I pulled into my destination: Limestone, the home of MSSM, located in rolling country of newly plowed potato fields with the Great North Woods in the distance, and the New Brunswick border just two miles to the east . I had a great visit with the college counselor and six MSSM juniors who hailed from points across the state, and then continued on to Caribou where I spent the night.

On Tuesday morning, I staffed the Colby table at the college fair at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. It was one of the better fairs I’ve attended, with well-prepared kids from a dozen high schools in The County, including some located in towns another hour or more north. At 11:00, the college reps packed up their wares and headed due south to Machias, a coastal town a good deal smaller than Waterville in a region known as Downeast Maine. (Extra points to those non-Mainers who know the origin of the expression Downeast.) It was another fantastic day and the drive straight down Route 1 took another four meandering hours, much of it within sight of Maine’s eastern border with Canada. I confess that there is a turn-off that could have shaved fifteen or twenty minutes off the drive, but then I would have missed several particularly beautiful little places; I even took a detour and drove out to Eastport on Quoddy Bay. The tides in this area are some of the most dramatic in the world, and even at the half-tide when I drove through, the flats stretched well into the distance. I arrived in Machias in plenty of time to take a walk through the woods and on the sandy beach at Roque Bluffs.

The college fair on Wednesday morning was at the University of Maine at Machias, located in Washington County, Maine’s eastern most, and also most economically depressed. Many livelihoods here are based on seasonal work: digging clams, working the vast stretches of blueberry fields, “tipping” and making holiday wreaths that are shipped all over the country. This economic picture is ironic given the spectacular beauty of the region, located nearly two hours east of Bar Harbor, and education is the ticket to a more prosperous future.

But it was from Machias that the real drive began, for I needed to be in Portsmouth, Rhode Island by evening. Those visitors to Colby who feel as if they’ve come to the end of the earth don’t have a clue just how much of Maine lies beyond Waterville. I got in my car after the fair in Machias at about 11:00 and didn’t arrive at my destination until almost 8:00 pm, although I did spend about an hour and a half spread out at a few stops along the way, and I chose to drive through Boston’s Big Dig as opposed to playing bumper cars on Route 128. Needless to say, I was glad to get out of the screaming yellow car.

Thursday morning brought a program at Portsmouth Abbey School followed by a similar event in the afternoon at St. George’s School in Newport. That evening, the college admissions officers who had participated in the program were treated to a fantastic dinner at an elegant country club, but not before a few of us wandered along Newport’s Cliff Walk, gawking at the mansions in the late afternoon sunlight. Let me tell you: it is a long way from Presque Isle to Machias to Newport, and I am not just talking mileage. To be candid, I’m not sure which area has the better deal.

Finally on Friday, the screaming yellow car and I made our way back to Waterville. I was fortunate to have had terrific spring weather on the entire trip. The sun roof was much appreciated, and the leather seats eased the long hours behind the wheel. But the best feature was satellite radio; as you can imagine, there were a few stretches of that week-long drive where the radio reception would have been pretty thin.

Oh yes: the point of this long voyage was to meet students, and that, of course, was the best part. No matter how humble or how privileged their backgrounds, students at their heart are fundamentally the same. They are all looking for a good education, a solid future, and the path to get them there. They were certainly worth the drive.

Eleventh Hour

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:43:58 GMT

In my last post, I promised I would address the fallout from the weighty decisions that seniors must make at this time of year, and the effect on the family as well. It has been over two weeks since I made that promise and although there is a slight lull in the action today, we have continued in the frenetic pace that seems to plague this line of work for most of the year. It’s fun, and it changes, but it’s pretty crazy most of the time.

Now the Candidates’ Common Reply Date looms before us: students must respond to our offers of admission yea or nay by tomorrow, May 1. That’s a postmark date, so we still won’t know just what the Class of ’12 will look like until Monday or Tuesday, but we do know that many of these decisions will be accompanied by a huge amount of teeth-gnashing and hair-tearing. One mom told me that she had never seen her usually calm and rational daughter so distraught and irrational. In another example, I recently encountered a father and daughter, a junior, who were visiting Colby from California. It took a while, but eventually I realized that I had met the gentleman last year when his older daughter applied to Colby. She was accepted, had been to campus to visit, and had loved what she found on Mayflower Hill, but there was another college of which she was equally enamored. As with all momentous decisions, there were plusses and minuses for both colleges. Colby was far from home; the other was nearby. The idea of going far away was both appealing and slightly unnerving, but she felt the same way about the notion of staying close to home. Several classmates from her school would be coming to Colby, several others to the other college. Both colleges were around the same size, offered strong majors in her field of interest, and had a very involved campus climate.

Ultimately she chose the other school, but she strongly advised her younger sister to consider Colby which was why the family was here that day. I expressed our regret that the older daughter had chosen the other college but said I knew it must have been a difficult decision for her.

“You have no idea!” exclaimed the younger sibling. “My sister was bouncing off the walls, the house was covered with lists of plusses and minuses, she changed her mind every day for a month. I was so glad when May 1 came and it finally stopped!”

I myself have been known to struggle with decisions, so I understand vacillation. It’s not as if one choice is a pot of gold, and the other a bag of rocks. My favorite analogy for this time of years is flavors of ice cream: you can only have one flavor, but no matter what, it’s ice cream. One year when I was a high school counselor, I had a student who had been accepted to two very well-known, well-respected universities. They were about the same size; they were both located in big cities on the East Coast equidistant from her home; they each had an urban campus setting; they both had strong programs in her field of interest; she could row crew at either one. She agonized over that decision for the entire month of April and finally I told her that really, she could just flip a coin and decide. That’s what she did, and she had a fine college career and now a successful professional one.

So the angst is almost over for the majority of seniors. There are still some very hopeful candidates on the Wait List who are dying to find out what happens on May 1. But to all our applicants this year, let me just say thank you for your interest in Colby and for your patience with the application process. Now go get some ice cream – as many flavors as you want.

From 36,764 ft

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:51:19 GMT

Readers who have been loyally following this blog since last fall may remember a couple of posts about my travel follies. Well, I’m back at it, writing this over the Rockies on a flight into Burbank at the start of five days of spring travel, spreading the word about Colby in Southern California, one of my territories. Last night while packing, I did a quick check of the weather forecast for the days ahead, so I’m as prepared as I can be for the temperature differential between my house in Bowdoinham, Maine, where it was about 40 degrees when I pulled out of my driveway at 4:45 a.m., and today’s destination, which is the Thermal, California, just east of Palm Springs, where the high is forecast to be 96 today. To be honest, I’m not all that excited about 96, no matter how low the humidity: Thermal indeed!

The Coachella Valley, where Thermal is located, is a significant date growing center. I am actually excited about that. One of the best things about travel is learning about different regions; that's also one of the big reasons that we see so many applicants from California, which was our #4 state in terms of accepted students in the current application cycle. Students who come to Colby tend to be a bit on the adventurous side, although admittedly I am defining “adventurous” broadly. But those who give up SoCal’s persistent sunshine and warm climate for New England’s fickle weather often do so because they are looking for something different. They’re interested in the opportunities of a small liberal arts environment, as opposed to the large university model that is pervasive in Cali; they’re curious about the cultural differences between the East and the West; more than a few like the idea of experiencing the seasons (often to the consternation of the adults in their lives, who seem frankly scared of the concept of temperatures below freezing).

Why do colleges like Colby expend significant resources, both financial and human, to seek out talented students from a great distance? There are two significant reasons, one philosophical and one a bit more practical. The philosophical one focuses on our commitment to building a diverse and interesting student body made up of people from many different backgrounds and experiences. It’s a wonderful thing to be in our bucolic little location in Maine with students from all over the country and around the world, Among other things, it adds a depth to the academic tenor of the place that we just wouldn’t have if everyone were from 20 minutes outside of Boston (which is the standing joke at Colby. In fact, Massachusetts is our #1 state in terms of enrollment, but Bay Staters comprise fewer than 20% of accepted applicants this year). This mix is appealing to students no matter where they’re from.

The more practical factor speaks to demographic trends. Although there is currently a big population wave of high school graduates, that wave is about to crest and the numbers of high school students will begin to decline. This is especially true in New England, where the decline is going to be steeper and quicker than in any other part of the country. That means we’ll have to work harder and smarter to continue to attract the kind of talented and accomplished people who comprise our student body.

There is an additional reason that’s especially important to me, and that is my knowledge that there are a lot of wonderful students who don’t know how many great opportunities are available to them for college. There are any number of reasons for this, including being the first in their families to go on to college, or not understanding that even hugely expensive places like Colby may be within their reach given our strong financial aid programs, or simply being unaware of what a liberal arts college is. I am especially committed to spreading the word to these students, and that’s why I’m driving out to where it’s 96 this afternoon. I’ll also be visiting several places where we typically have a fair amount of interest, and I’ll be participating in several programs this week with students and parents from a number of schools in Orange County and San Diego.

But now we are flying out of Utah, across the corner of Nevada and into California, according to the dandy in-flight map courtesy of Jet Blue. It’s time to see if I can catch another little nap in an attempt to compensate for the horrendously early hour that I arose this morning. It is not lost on me that the hour was even earlier where I will finally rest my head tonight. I’m looking forward to treating myself to some decent Mexican food this evening, something not easily found in Maine – and probably some dates too.

Next week: Riding the decision roller coaster, an occupational hazard for seniors at this time of year – and their families, too.

A Different Kind of Frenzy

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 17:03:30 GMT

Admittedly, the pressure is off. I can go home at night and read a book or the newspaper, or attend to household responsibilities (such as paying the bills) without feeling as if piles of files are looming over me.

But inside Lunder, things are humming along as we make efforts to enroll those students who have been accepted -- and begin all over again with current juniors. During April, we are open on Saturday mornings to accommodate students and their families who have difficulty coming during the week; we expect that most of these visitors will be accepted students who are weighing their options, but in the information session I just gave this morning, I had a full house that was nothing but juniors and their parents. [Actually, there was a grandparent as well, a wonderful gentleman who graduated from Colby in the Class of 1937. His father had also graduated from Colby and had been a professor here too. I am glad I did not discover this until after I gave my talk!]

We’ll be full on Monday as well when we have a special open house for accepted students from Maine, and during the following week, which is a school vacation week in Maine, Massachusetts, and other states, there will be two more open houses. Several of my colleagues have already left town to conduct the receptions that we hold for accepted students around the country: Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver, Chicago, New York, DC, Boston – did I miss a few?

All of this stuff takes a tremendous amount of planning: lining up additional tour guides, student panelists, faculty speakers, alumni guests; securing appropriate venues on and off campus; ordering refreshments; sending appropriately timed invitations and tallying RSVP’s; alerting the campus to the impending parking crises that accompany the open houses; stuffing folders with meal tickets, class schedules, and campus maps. The devil is in the details, and there are a myriad of them to consider. Suffice it to say, we are not sitting back and patting each other on the back for recruiting a talented and diverse Class of 2012, even though we’ve just done that.

There are also many phone calls. The hardest ones are from fine students who were not admitted to Colby and want to understand why. Often, there is little we can share with them beyond the fact that this was a hugely talented pool of applicants, more than 70% of whom were not offered admission. Many are also from students on the Wait List who are trying to figure out this complicated process and weigh their options. And sometimes, there are calls from parents who wonder what else they themselves might have done to help their students’ chances for admission. Those are very difficult first of all because it’s after the fact, and secondly because it’s not their fault – and not the student’s fault either. It’s all about the overall quality of all the applicants put together. As I often say to my own peers, many of us would not be admitted now to the colleges from which we actually graduated a decade or two ago (or longer…).

So it’s a different kind of busy, and that’s a relief. The best thing about this job is that there is never a dull moment.

STILL Waiting...

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:02:49 GMT

The letter arrives. It’s a little envelope. You sigh and think to yourself, “This stinks, but at least the wait is over.”

But no. It’s the Wait List letter. Neither in, nor out. Prolonging the agony.

What do you do?

Well, for starters, you assess your options. If you’ve been accepted at several colleges, you clearly have options, and they’re probably decent ones. Does continuing uncertainty at Colby look more appealing than the sure thing? Or are you ready to move on at last?

We know there will be a substantial number of you who will decide that another college is just fine, thanks. OK, no problem. Your course of action is quick and easy: just check the appropriate box on the card, let us know where you plan to enroll, stick the card in the envelope, and drop it in the mail. Don’t Delay, Do It Today. The sooner you let us know, the better – for us, but more importantly for your fellow wait list students who truly do want to stay in contention.

The very worst thing you can do is to hang on the wait list when you have no intention of coming to Colby “just to see if I can get in.” Please be kind to those who really want the opportunity to become a Mule.

Let’s say you’re one of those still-aspiring Mules. What’s your best course of action?

First, send back the card – or if you prefer, you can write us a letter. If you’re sure you’d come to Colby if offered a place, let us know that. Lots of students are curious about whether providing further supporting information will improve their chances of being chosen from the wait list. In most cases, the answer is no; however, there are times when there is a significant difference in a student’s performance, and in those cases, a new set of grades or another demonstration of standing might be helpful.

Then take another look at your options – literally. Visit the campuses where you’ve been accepted, attend a class if you can, eat in the dining hall, talk to students. If you change your mind about Colby’s wait list, you can let us know at any point. This course of action also applies if you’re on the fence about the wait list.

How will we use the wait list this year? The answer is very simple: we don’t know, and we probably won’t know until well into April. We have done our best to try to accept the number of students that is predicted to bring a Class of 2012 to Mayflower Hill that’s the perfect size: 480. But this is a tricky business, especially this year when we have done away with loans in our financial aid packages, a move that may change families’ thinking about college attendance. But that’s why we have a wait list: in order to make sure that we’ll have a class that meets the needs of the Colby community.

Finally, remember that if you’re offered a spot from the wait list and you come to Colby, you will be able to be as successful as the next student. Don’t take my word for it, though. I’ll close with a comment that came in from a mom in reference to an earlier posting. She tells it far batter than I can.

For all those now anxiously awaiting decision letters, I want to share a personal story. Last year my daughter was on pins and needles waiting to hear from Colby (and I was worse). She was waitlisted and, of course, devastated even though she had been invited to attend other fine colleges. She made plans to attend one of those and became quite enthusiastic about it. Then she was accepted to Colby off the waitlist and, after initially resisting the school that hadn't wanted her in the first place (as she saw it), she chose Colby. She has thrived there, made the Dean's list, and made significant contributions to a varsity team. All of which only goes to show, I guess, that the whole process is very difficult and the verdict of college admission committees is hardly prescient--as they would admit. Even though my daughter was not accepted in the RD round at Colby, she's now in the top 20% of her class academically and has made contributions in many other areas. I wish all of you who are waiting for decisions well and urge you to know that a student's true worth and potential cannot be evaluated with any level of certainty by any admissions committee. There are many great colleges (and no perfect ones) and when all the admissions committees have had their say, there will be a place where every young person can thrive.

48 Hours

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:59:58 GMT

I am writing this from the mailroom where I am admiring the order that Beth, our mailroom supervisor, has maintained over the course of the last few weeks. There are neat rows and columns of trays and “buckets,” as we call them: the trays contain the small envelopes and the buckets have the big ones. Orderly signs indicate the alphabetic contents; baskets hold personalized reply cards or folders ready to be stuffed with acceptance letters and financial aid awards. The room is eerily calm and quiet; the mood is anticipatory. Beth maintains that quiet order to make sure that the information gets to you. In fact, she has kept the door mostly closed in order to avoid the distraction of people coming and going outside her sanctuary.

I offer this picture because I know that those of you who are waiting are likely to be anything but calm. We know this is a big deal for you. The trays and buckets will soon hold all of the decision letters that are to be mailed out on Wednesday afternoon, leaving Lunder at about 3:30 pm. Every applicant will eventually receive one of four letters.

The least common letter is the one that will offer a student an unusual entry into Colby: that is, starting your Colby career in Dijon, France or Salamanca, Spain. This small number of students will join the rest of the Class of 2012 on Mayflower Hill next January, but meanwhile they will immerse themselves in another culture for four months and complete several of their diploma requirements in the process, putting them on track to graduate with their class year in May, 2012. This special category is offered only to students who have at least a basic level of proficiency in French or Spanish and have demonstrated through their applications that they have a bit of a sense of adventure and might welcome this truly interesting opportunity.

Next up would be the Wait List letter. These are students who are certainly qualified to do the work at Colby, but as I’ve discussed in other blog posts, we simply cannot accept all the qualified students who apply. None-the-less, we would very much like to have these students come to Colby if space permits. In years past, we have taken 20 or more students from the wait list, but we have also had years when we have taken only 1 or 2 – or even none. I’ll talk more about the wait list next week.

Then there is the Accept letter. Of course, this is the one that most students hope to find in their mailboxes. Congratulations to you all! Some of you, though, will have already decided that Colby is not in your future plans after all; in that case, please let us know as soon as possible, since there will be some great students on the wait list who would love to come to Colby if possible.

Finally, the largest number of envelopes leaving Lunder on Wednesday will contain Deny letters. Obviously, the majority of students who receive this letter will feel disappointed – not to mention a whole range of other emotions that might not be as pretty. For you, I offer a few thoughts:

First, you are in fine company. My rough calculations are that about 80% of the applications we read are from students who are qualified. In other words, they have taken challenging courses and have had a good record in high school; they have been involved in their schools and/or their larger communities; they have done their research; they have put together good applications. But we simply cannot take everyone in this extremely competitive year. Last year, the acceptance rate was about 30%. This year, it will likely be lower.

Second, it’s not that we don’t like you, or that we don’t want you. In fact, we’d genuinely like to be able to accept many more students. But we simply can’t accommodate everyone. Colby would not be Colby if we did.

Third (and this is what lets me sleep at night after reading applications from students whom we’d like to admit but can’t), if you are applying to Colby, you are very likely to have other good options for a fine education. The Colby applicant pool is a fairly exclusive ballpark, and if you’re in it, you’ll have other choices. In fact, I am betting that most of you have been accepted by other colleges already.

This is slim consolation, I know. But I think back to a young woman from the Boston area who had her heart set on Colby several years ago. She had been a good student and she had a creative talent that was well demonstrated in her application. However, she was not quite as competitive as other applicants and she was not offered admission. She was completely devastated, and I received a desperate message from her mother hoping there had been a mistake, hoping that there would be a way for her daughter to come to Colby. I corresponded with the mother by e-mail through the month of April, but alas, it was not to be. The student reluctantly enrolled at a liberal arts college outside of New England that is not quite as well known as Colby, but where she had been offered a place in an honors program. The happy ending to this story is that a year later, her mother once again contacted me to say that the student had quickly found her feet at the other college and was excelling in some very exciting ways. Had we been able to admit her to Colby, she probably would be thriving here as well, but the point is that new doors opened for her unexpectedly, and I doubt she’d trade places at this point.

From the mailroom, I wish good luck to you all. Good things will happen for you. I’ve been around for a long time, and I know this will be true.

Last app?

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 20:08:38 GMT

It’s possible that I might have just read my last application for the season (possible, but not likely; there always seem to be a few that surface even after we think we’re finished). I have been looking forward to this for a long time. For the last ten days or so, I have continually thought I was down to my last ten applications. I’d read eight apps and then realize that another twelve had materialized, so I’d work my way through those and somehow, there would be seven more in my bag to go home with me at night. Yesterday afternoon before I left the office, my colleague Jamie came around distributing a few second reads among us and with that, it seemed like we were at last at the end. The big boxes upstairs in the file room have been consolidated as decisions have been entered into the database, and perhaps, perhaps the reading is over.

Oddly enough, I am a little sad. Even though the pressure of reading season can feel oppressive and overwhelming, I will miss the winter days at home with the dog and the wood stove. Very shortly, I’ll be dismantling the appealing space in the living room where I read. The current generation of blooming amaryllis will find a new spot in the house, the desk lamp will go back to the desk, and the card table will be folded up and put back in the closet. The lyric-less CD’s in groups of five for my listening pleasure on our five-CD changer will be returned to their alphabetized slots. We actually don’t spend a lot of time in the living room outside of my hunkering down for reading season, and I’ll miss the space.

On the other hand, I’ll be able to go to Sugarloaf next weekend and ski for the whole of both days for the first time since mid-December (if my legs can take it). I’ll also be able to spend a few evenings a week doing precious little other than reading the paper or even something as mindless as watching, “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” (All right, I’ll admit it: I watched this for the first time – and quite likely the last time – this past Thursday and was utterly stunned by the stupidity of it.) In short, I’m about to get my life back.

Not that it’s all free and clear, of course. There is plenty to do in Lunder House over the next ten days before we mail the decision letters. While I’ve finished my piece of the reading, the decisions certainly are not finalized and won’t be for another week. The mechanics of stuffing the envelopes and doing the actual mailing will require a great deal of manpower in the coming days, although when I was in the mailroom on Friday morning, I was impressed to see how much precise advance work Beth, our mailroom supervisor, has been able to accomplish due to her uncanny ability to anticipate detail and implement efficient systems. There is a huge amount of fine-tuning that must be done; it’s the rough work that’s about over.

At the very least, we’re relatively certain that the light at the end of the tunnel is not an oncoming train. As for missing my cozy times at home, there’s always next year.

Wintry Mix

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 02:11:02 GMT

I woke up this morning to the telltale scratching sound on the skylight over the bed that means the precipitation outside is not very friendly. Sure enough, when I went downstairs and slid open the barn door from the inside, the cement apron leading to the driveway was an inch deep in what looked like tiny Styrofoam balls. But Styrofoam does not fall from the sky; these were ice pellets, a meteorological wonder that occurs from time to time when the temperature is just right, meaning that the precipitation might fall as snow, rain, freezing rain, sleet or ice pellets –and sometimes all of the above in the course of an hour. The message was clear: I would not be driving to my office at Colby, forty-five minutes away most of the time, but not today.

The weather was a telling metaphor, actually. The TV meteorologists call this kind of forecast “a wintry mix,” because no one can predict what’s going to come down, or how much of it, when the temperature hovers just around the freezing mark as it did all day today. No one likes this forecast because it’s a drag to drive in it, you can’t really play in it, but you still have to shovel it, and worst of all, by this point of the winter, you’re just plain sick of it all. It is a trial to be borne, and it will pass eventually, with better days to come. That’s pretty much how all of us in Lunder are feeling at the moment about application reading season too. There is light at the end of the tunnel, but in the meantime, the excitement of reading the stories of the applicants has worn pretty thin – and there are still plenty of applications to get through.

Many of the applications at this point are less compelling. We receive a certain number every year from students who are just kicking Colby’s tires and are not all that serious about the college. Since we don’t charge an application fee for those who apply electronically, some tire kicking is bound to ensue but by the time we figure this out with a given application, there has already been a considerable investment of time. Much of our time these days is spent chasing missing credentials, from Colby Supplements to SAT scores to transcripts to teacher recommendations. I contacted one young man earlier in the week about missing materials, and he wrote back somewhat sheepishly that he had applied “by mistake” and to please cancel his application. So the applications remaining to be read are somewhat of a wintry mix as well.

Meanwhile, Lucia and David, our financial aid colleagues, are really in the thick of need analysis. They can’t begin this process, of course, until they know who will be admitted; with the decision letters on track to be mailed at the end of the month, they are putting in some serious hours so that the financial aid awards are set to go as well. They are too busy at the moment to pay any attention to the weather.

And there is another element in the mix: gearing up for the Class of 2013. That’s right: we don’t yet know who is going to be in the Class of 2012, but a series of college fairs is staring us in the face in April, mixed in with Open Houses here on campus that will be comprised of accepted students trying to figure out where to enroll as well as current juniors who are trying to figure out where to apply. I will be heading to Rhode Island and Massachusetts one week, and Southern California the next, and oh by the way, I probably ought to buy the ticket to get out there, eh? That’s right after I read four more applications this evening…

Tomorrow is another day, and the forecast is better. As a matter of fact, at the end of the afternoon the dog made me take her for a walk after the precip had stopped. As the sun back-lit the clouds, the sky cast a pink glow and I suddenly realized that it was 5:30 and not a bit dark. This may not mean much to you, but to me it means that winter is on its way out, and along with it the applications will soon be finished. Whew!

P.S. We plan to mail our decision letters on Wednesday, March 26 (3 weeks from today – yikes!) with international letters going out on the same day by express delivery. Applicants will be able to view their decision letters electronically at 5:00 pm Colby time on Friday, March 28 at the same website where the application status is displayed, utilizing the user name and password that were sent with the application acknowledgement back in January.

Closing In

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 04:06:09 GMT

Yesterday afternoon, I was in the familiar position of pulling folders to bring home with me to read today. The applications have been moved this year from the back room on the first floor of Lunder to a less cramped and more spacious space on the second floor where our incessant mumbling and the general talking-to-ourselves that marks this process is less bothersome to our dedicated support staff that is actually trying to get some work done. One day I was up there replacing folders I’d read while pulling the next batch and trying to keep them generally sorted out, talking to myself as usual, when I realized that one of our beleaguered student workers was off to the side, trying to get something done herself. I apologized for my soto voce ramblings, but she said, “Oh, I don’t even hear it any more; everyone over here talks to themselves.” Sigh.

The new location means that there is always a different audience for those mumblings, depending on who happens to be pulling files. While I was in the midst of leafing through the boxes yesterday, our office manager Penny came in triumphantly bearing a 24” stack of files and announced that these were the last of the “new” applications to be readied for reading: in other words, they are all processed at last: no new files are going to be added to those boxes on the second floor. Nearly two months after the deadline, the staff has been able to sort, collate, record, file, enter and proof the thousands of applications, recommendations, transcripts, midyear grades, test scores, arts supplements, etc. etc. It’s an amazing task, and it’s over. Yippee!

So that means that we readers ought to be feeling as if the end of the reading season is in sight, and I guess I’m beginning to catch a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. At this point, though, many of the applications are missing a component: the test scores weren’t received; the student inadvertently neglected to hit the “Submit” button for the Colby Supplement; the recommendations are in but the transcript is not. So many of the files I have pulled recently are not complete, and I have spent a good portion of the last several reading sessions sending e-mail messages to counselors and students in the search for credentials. And yes, I am still surrounded by stacks of folders.

One person isn’t, though. Barbara Chase was the office manager in Lunder for nine years. Last spring, she announced that she would retire in the fall, and in November we had a wonderful, elegant retirement dinner for her right in Lunder House in the comfortably elegant rooms that by day host our visiting students and their families. Then tragedy struck in the form of the death of our beloved colleague Tom Kopp. In addition to the profound personal and professional void that resulted, on the most practical level we were down an experienced reader. (To call Tom “an experienced reader” is just silly. There is no one at Colby with more experience than Tom had.) Barbara graciously agreed to postpone her well-earned retirement to help Lunder House in a very difficult period. Although she knew the process from all angles, she had never formally evaluated applications before but she eagerly learned the nuances and did a substantial number of “second reads.” Of course she was a bonus resource to Penny who had to learn the office manager job during its most challenging season.

But last Friday was finally Barbara’s last official day in Lunder. It’s a loss in many ways. Barbara did a lot of things very well, but her specialty was finding things: the SAT score gone astray, the application cover folder that had wandered away from its rightful file box, any number of obscure pieces of information locked away in our cantankerous database. She tended not to let situations or people ruffle her feathers, even when tempers were running high right before the mailing deadlines. She’s flexible and patient, but she firmly stands her ground when it’s the right thing to do. Personally, one of the things I’ll miss most is not having Barbara around to talk with about books.

So we wish her well in what I’m sure will be a very active retirement. Barbara’s undergraduate degree is in studio art and I’m guessing she’ll be putting those creative talents to good use. Thanks for everything.

Homebody

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 18:31:09 GMT

This morning I had a comment left for one of my November blog posts called “Nomads.” I wrote it back in the throes of the hectic travel season when I was whining about living in rental cars, hotels, airplanes and other conveyances. What a difference a few months makes. Just now, I find myself thinking about far-away places and how I’d like to visit them.

But instead, I am a homebody. I live about 45 minutes from Colby so in an average week (whatever that is), I spend an hour and a half each day, five days a week in the car, sometimes with car pooling buddies, sometimes with history lectures on CD, and most often with NPR. During application season, of which we are in the midst, that hour and a half each day is especially lamented since I am such a slow reader. So two days a week, I stay home with stacks of files and attempt to play catch up.

These are wonderful days, actually. I can sleep an hour later and still be sitting at the card table in the living room, opening my first application of the day well before I would have trudged in from the parking lot to my office. That card table replaces the Christmas tree just after the first of the year and stays there in front of a window until the end of March. It is equipped with a basket of my favorite reading tools: mechanical pencils, red felt tip pen, yellow highlighter, correction tape, chap stick, hand cream; there is also a reading lamp and two potted amaryllis bulbs whose steady growth acts like a barometer of reading season’s progress. Outside the window is a bare lilac bush that occasionally beckons interesting birds for a sojourn. On really cold days, I build a fire in the woodstove which makes it extra cozy, and there are always 5 CD’s of classical music or jazz in the stereo – anything without lyrics to distract me. When everything’s running perfectly, I can get a lot done.

Sometime between 1:00 and 2:00 p.m., though, the dog has had enough of this lazing around and demands to go for a walk. This is a good thing about dogs: they make you get outside. Often we’ll go a couple of hundred yards down the road to where a snowmobile trail takes off into a field and the woods beyond. We’ve had some great romps, and an hour or so later my head is clear and I’m ready to get back to those essays. Sometimes though, some home thing intervenes, like making dinner, or the plumber coming to replace the kitchen faucet, or certainly this winter, I have to snowblow the driveway again, and use the roof rake as well. (No idea what a roof rake is, or why you’d need to rake a roof? Maybe that’s the subject of another blog post.) So it all sounds very idyllic, and in theory I ought to be able to read 57 files a day in an environment like this. But we all know that the ideal and the real are often mutually exclusive. Still, I get a lot more read at home than in the office.

Another distraction that reels me in is the international applications, and that’s what’s fueling my desire to travel again, especially to places I’ve never been. Romania? Turkey? Mumbai? Which, of course, leads me to Kayak.com to check out airfares for the end of March, maybe …

New Look

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:41:18 GMT

I’ve been posting entries to this blog for a little over a year now. The original idea was that I would get the thing started, and then other Lunder House denizens would take over for limited stints – sort of a rotation. So the photo selected for the blog homepage was more-or-less a generic choice featuring our Fearless Leader, Dean Parker Beverage, peering out from piles of files. It’s a fun image that graced the cover of a Colby magazine issue containing a detailed article, “The Decision,” that provided a candid look at how we choose the incoming class. That was in 2004, a few months before I joined the staff; you can find it on the Colby website. Some of the details have changed, such as a greater number of applicants and hence a greater number to read each day, but it’s still a pretty accurate reflection of how we do things.

It has become apparent, however, that I am the one and only Lunder House blogger. I guess it just seems like more fun to me than to the rest of my colleagues, and of course it does claim a portion of time each week, time being a limited commodity in all of our lives. So finally, Colby’s Communications Director decided that it would be a good idea to have the accompanying photo be of me rather than Parker. Among other things, this will cut down on the number of befuddled prospective students who send me e-mail messages beginning “Dear Mr. Streett.” You can’t blame them.

Enter Kendyl Sullivan, ’11, of Center Ossippee, New Hampshire, by way of Fryeburg Academy in Maine. She came today and shot a skillion photos of me in and around Lunder, most of which included lots of application folders. That, of course, is what we’re all doing these days: reading applications, and lots of ‘em. So it was fun to take a break and get to know Kendyl a little bit. She has had an ardent interest in photojournalism since she was in elementary school, and was one of three entering students hired this year as photographers for insideColby.com, our website and magazine entirely comprised of student content. There were 30 applicants for these positions, each of whom had to submit of portfolio of work and also shoot a trial assignment. Kendyl thinks it’s great experience that she hopes will help her to land an internship this summer with a news photographer. I had absolutely no inspiration for clever poses, but Kendyl took care of that. Look for her work each week in the Student Lens, which comes out on Friday afternoons and features images of what’s been going on at Colby for the last seven days. Check out in particular some amazing shots of a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert she attended in Portland last fall; see Gallery 57: Steppers, A Capella, Jazz, and More.

So now when you read the blog, it’s me that you’re seeing, thanks to Kendyl. But it’s time for me to go back to the piles of files. More anon.
[Needless to say, I've included a few of the options. There were lots more. What do you think?]

BIG News!!

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 19:22:18 GMT

Last weekend at their regularly scheduled meeting, Colby’s trustees voted to do away with student loans as a part of our financial aid packaging, replacing that amount with additional grant (aka free money). This is a hugely exciting development for us. We started down this road in the fall when the trustees decided to begin by abolishing loans for Maine students. The reception of this news was so positive that the Board decided to give everyone the same break (and it certainly didn’t hurt that Colby’s endowment has had a record performance).

Issues of access to college are incredibly important to me. I always take a deep breath when I have to talk about the annual cost of a Colby education (and I certainly had a much stronger reaction when writing the checks for our older son’s NESCAC tuition!). I know that there are certainly families who can afford the price tag, but there are plenty of wonderful prospective students out there who simply can’t. When talking about the annual cost, I always follow up with points about how we try to make it affordable for families, and I am very proud to work for a college which funds 100% of the calculated financial need of every student whom we accept. But now I can add that we’ll be meeting 100% of that need without any student loans in the package.

To be sure, there is some fine print, and I will attempt to sort that out for you. Colby, like many of its peer institutions, requires both the FAFSA and the CSS Profile in its financial aid application process. There is a difference in how that data is evaluated. Our packages are based on Institutional Methodology, and as of the 2008-2009 academic year, those packages will not have any loans included in them; the amount of loan that previously would have been included will be replaced by the aforementioned free money. However, each financial aid package is based on a calculated family contribution which could range from $500 to the total cost. There are federal loans available that some families may decide to use to help meet that contribution, such as Parent PLUS loans or Stafford loans. In addition, there will be some recipients who will qualify for loans using the Federal Methodology (i.e. the Perkins loan). Taking out this kind of loan is strictly up to the family, whereas before Perkins and some Stafford loans might have been a part of the financial aid package and that’s the part that is going away. Over the course of four years at Colby, that could save a student over $14,000, not counting the interest on the loan.

There’s good news this year for international students, too. If you’re accepted to Colby and qualify for grant aid, we will be working with you individually to help with your travel expenses to arrive on Mayflower Hill in August. Not to mention the Summer Assistance Program that has been in place for years for most international students: your choice of a campus job or a $2,000 stipend to be used as you see fit to support you over the summer. There are advantages to both options, and you get to choose one of them each year.

So that’s the Big News!! Yippee!!

Now, back to the files – so that we can figure out who’s getting in so we can figure out who’s not getting the loans.

Cheers!

L.O.S.

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 20:14:53 GMT

At last week’s staff meeting, questions abounded about the number of applications we’ve received this year. Everyone wants to know, because reading more or less defines our winter, and we’re interested in knowing whether it’s going to be – well, more or less reading in the coming months. The problem is that we're now in L.O.S., or "Loss of Signal" period. You know: when the spacecraft orbits behind the moon and communication with earth is interrupted. At this moment, projecting a precise final application count is impossible. When we met last Wednesday morning, the stalwart crew in the mailroom had just begun tackling the mail deliveries received after January 1; in other words, there was a week’s worth of backlog despite a well-staffed operation that has seen some streamlining in the last year or two.

The vast majority of our prospective students apply on-line, but some diehard souls prefer the pen-in-hand method, and others, perhaps with a bit of panic, opt for the belts-and-suspenders approach, printing out a copy of the application they’ve just submitted on-line and sending it to us in the mail. So it can be quite a sorting process, and if you haven’t yet received your letter from us acknowledging your application, don’t worry. It’s coming.

Similarly, the process of matching credentials with all of those applications will be on-going for some time to come. Hence, if you have just received that letter of acknowledgement with its username and password allowing you to check your application status, you may see that a recommendation is missing, or that your high school transcript has not been received. For the next week or ten days, do yourself, your teacher and us a favor: remember that it’s L.O.S. Hold off on taking action until the end of the month by which time, if all goes well, we should have been able to get through the masses of paper.

Having said all this, it’s looking like the number of applications is up again this year which means a lot of reading ahead. So I’m going to finish this missive and hunker down at home by the purring woodstove to read, awaiting the return of the signal.

Happy New Year!

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 20:54:35 GMT

Not nearly as much snow as we actually have, but you get the idea...
On New Year’s Eve day, we received 8” of lovely snow. It cleared off in the afternoon, bringing on a spectacular starry night to usher in 2008. The following day dawned bright and sparkling, but was gradually replaced by cloud cover and wonder of wonders, another 8” of snow. I have an admirable icicle growing down past my window in Lunder House – a crop of them, actually – and Colby looks majestic in its pristine white blanket.

Meanwhile, there are already about 750 applications waiting for us to read. It’s early in the season for us to have so many files compiled and ready to go, especially since the pace down in the mail room is now at the feverish stage. Each mail delivery brings box after box full of transcripts, essays, recommendations and supplements. A number of international students who stayed on campus for the holiday break are working to open the mail and organize the contents; it is tedious but exacting work to make sure that all the credentials are cataloged and filed correctly. But they are cheerful in their work, regaling Beth, the mailroom supervisor, with interesting tales about their homelands: Saloman from Kenya, Shylock from Zimbabwe, Rodrigo from Ecuador and Qiam from Afghanistan. Also pitching in is Katie, a senior who came to Colby all the way from Winslow, on the other side of the Kennebec River from Waterville. She has a few interesting stories of her own. Rounding out the crew last week was one of our own: Mike Montgomery, who worked with us in Admissions and Financial Aid for ten years, is back to the student calendar, having embarked on a master’s program at Vanderbilt University. He was home for the holidays and decided to pitch in with Beth’s workers. What a trooper!

One of the issues we’ve been hearing a lot about today over the phone and via e-mail is a frustrating problem with the Common Application website. Many students’ best efforts to meet the January 1 deadline have been thwarted by technological glitches, especially with the Colby Supplement. I think it’s a wonder that the Common App website manages to function at all on January 1. [Note to juniors: plan ahead!] On the other hand, the two students whom I interviewed today both heaved sighs of relief that the application process was over.

Advice of the week: if you’ve applied to Colby, be on the lookout for an envelope from our office with a letter acknowledging our receipt of your application. The letter will also contain a username and password so that you can access our website to see if all of your application materials have been received. Remember that the credential sorting process takes a long time so don’t panic if it looks as if we’re missing a recommendation or something.

The full compliment of Lunder House staffers are not yet back in the saddle, but eeryone will be here next week. Our loyal holiday student workers will be wrapped up in their Jan Plan courses and projects which means the rest of us will be taking shifts in the mailroom.

And the reading has begun!

ED and Athletics

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 20:00:53 GMT

I recently received a question posted as a Comment: “How many RECRUITED student athletes did you accept in ED 1?” (emphasis by sender)

It’s a good question, and a timely one as well, not only because we had recently wrapped up the ED 1 process but also because of Daniel Golden, author of this fall’s buzz-producing book The Price of Admission. Golden spoke at Colby on Thursday evening, December 6, to a good-sized crowd of students and staff at the invitation of the student-run Pugh Center Community Board; the following day, there was a lunch discussion attended by many of us who had heard Golden the previous evening. Golden’s thesis is that the admissions process at selective private colleges often favors applicants with lesser qualifications who are well-connected: legacies, celebrities, the super-rich, as well as athletes. The crowds were pretty tame at both events, but the Golden buzz was definitely going on around campus.

I preface my answer to the above question with Golden’s appearance on campus for a couple of reasons. In the first place, I feel that Golden has some valid points, but also that he presents facts in a manner that supports his thesis rather than in a more objective fashion. For example, he posited in his lecture that another group receiving preferential treatment includes faculty and staff dependents. As evidence, he cited Colby’s policy that pays half the cost of Colby tuition to dependents who enroll. His implication was that the College subsidizes the cost of the education for dependents who enroll at Colby, but the actual fact is that the College offers this benefit to dependents no matter where they enroll (after the employee has worked for six years, which in my case means I’ll be eligible for this wonderful benefit exactly two months after our youngest child graduates from college).

The second reason that I mention Golden’s theories is to demonstrate that we’re well aware of the buzz, and we very consciously try to be fair in our admissions process. The truth is that the vast majority of Colby’s applicants are qualified: they’ve taken challenging courses and have done well in them; they’ve been involved in interesting and enriching activities in school and/or in their communities; they’re academically curious and community-spirited students who could both benefit from, and be a benefit to, the college. But we cannot take them all. So the trick is to find an interesting mix of people representing a variety of talents and interests.

A significant number of the 124 students whom we admitted in the ED 1 process had input from one of our coaches. That does not mean that every single one of those applicants was highly desirable to the coach, and more importantly it doesn’t mean that the applicant would have been deferred were it not for the coach’s input; indeed, some of those student athletes were among our strongest applicants. As a member of NESCAC, we abide by conference policies which you may review:
http://www.nescac.com/Conference/admissions.htm

One of the things that makes me proud to work at Colby is my belief that our coaches truly “get it” when it comes to D-III athletics. They do not have an interest in bringing athletes to their teams who are going to struggle in the classroom. They do not encourage applications from students who have little chance of being admitted. Are there some applicants whose decisions are influenced by their skills? Certainly. That skill set might be athletic, but it might also be artistic, linguistic, proven through community involvement, or any number of other categories. At the end of the day, the students we admit, ED or otherwise, are academically qualified and will benefit the community and themselves by coming to Colby.

OK. Long answer to a straight-forward question. Happy holidays.

More thoughts on ED, app etiquette, and snow

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 18:16:56 GMT

Once the ED 1 decisions go out, we usually look forward to a bit of a break in the action, one that conveniently surrounds the holidays. Not so this year. Already, the boxes of applications are growing in the back room and the pace in the mailroom has picked up considerably. I am feeling a little guilty that I haven’t started reading those applications yet, but I am still trying to find the top of my desk after the hectic ups and downs of the fall.

Reactions to our ED letters have been trickling in. Some people are predictably thrilled while others are understandably very disappointed. To the latter group, let me offer a bit of advice. Sometimes students apply ED as a response to college pressure all around them: everyone they know is applying ED somewhere, and/or they’re so sick and tired of the whole application business that they pick a place in the [perhaps unspoken] hope that they can just get this thing over with. In some cases, then, the disappointment turns into a blessing since it can open up new avenues for consideration. At the risk of being very blunt, you can’t change the decision at this point, so you may as well find a way to look at it as an opportunity.

Deferred students want to know what they can do to enhance their chances of admission in the regular round. The most important answer, of course, is to do as well as they possibly can in their academics. We will be reviewing first semester grades for everyone in the regular application pool, and a very strong performance is compelling. Updated information can also be submitted whether it’s academic, extracurricular or personal. Sometimes talented musicians or artists will send examples of their work. Occasionally we will see an additional recommendation, or perhaps an updated one from a counselor. Finally, if Colby remains the number one choice (in other words, if offered admission, the student will surely enroll), a letter to that effect can be helpful. This letter should be sent after carefully considering all options (e.g., mid- to late February).

Here’s another application suggestion offered by Lunder readers: we implore you not to clutter your file with numerous recommendations. The basic letters from two teachers and your counselor tell us what we need to know. The one exception to this might be an unusual situation: the recommendation from the pastor of your church if you have had extraordinary involvement, or the like. The least useful recommendations are those that come from “famous” people who don’t really know you very well (i.e. the judge who’s a friend of your grandfather).

And here’s a reminder that will bear repeating in the coming month: don’t panic if you check our website after we have received your application and discover that one of your teacher recommendations has not been recorded, or your SAT scores are missing, etc. As I said at the beginning of this post, mail is arriving at a rapid pace here in Lunder and it will take us a while to sort through it all and let it find its proper place. Don’t forget that we all take a little time off to enjoy families and friends over the holidays. When should you start to panic? Well actually, you shouldn’t ever panic. But you can contact one of us to ask about tracking down a “missing” item around the first of February.

Snow update: there’s a line in the old song “I’ve Got Your Love to Keep Me Warm” in which the singer says, “I can’t remember a worse December…” Well, it’s a regular Winter Wonderland here in Waterville, making it the best kind of December to my way of thinking. The students have mostly departed for the semester break, so things are quiet on Mayflower Hill – quiet, and quite beautiful with a foot or more of the white stuff. I probably won’t be posting anything for a couple of weeks, so let me just wish you and yours a fine holiday season and all the best for 2008. Thanks for reading this blog.

Cheers!

What Not To Write

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 21:38:04 GMT

We have spent the past two weeks getting back into shape for the heavy work of application review that occupies the winter months in Lunder House. Nearly all of the first round Early Decision applications have been read several times and the final decisions will be hammered out in time to get the letters in the mail this coming Wednesday afternoon, December 12. After 5 p.m. on Friday, December 14, ED I applicants will be able to access their decisions on the Admissions website using their previously-issued user names and passwords.

This warm-up, if you will, provides us with an opportunity to convey some cautionary notes to those who will be applying in time for our January 1 deadline. I took a stroll through Lunder and asked my esteemed colleagues for their best advice. Here we go:
1. Respect the word/character limits for the written responses. We have a lot to read and while we’re truly interested in your ideas, please stick to the prescribed space.
2. Be yourself. Don’t try to write what you think we want to read. The essay is our way of seeing your personality; we’re interested in who you actually are, as opposed to who you think we want you to be.
3. And in this same vein, write about what’s important to you. Any topic you can think up – well, we’ve probably read an essay about it. But having said that, please don’t write about your sex life. We’ve seen those essays from time to time, and in fact, they do stand out, but just don’t do this, OK?
4. Get to the point. This relates to #1, above. Right from the first sentence, you need to let us know what this essay is about. A subset of this concept relates to our Colby Supplemental essay, in which we ask you to choose one of five quotations and write about it with respect to yourself. At the end of the essay, it should be very clear to us which of those quotations you selected.
5. Put some effort into your “Why Colby” response. The most obvious point, and we make it over and over again in our presentations, is not to mention Bates or the Green Mountains of Vermont, etc. This would not exclude you from contention, but it’s not going to impress us either. Beyond that, do a little research and make sure you are specific to Colby. Mention your tour guide, or the visit to the Art Museum, or a specific course or two from the catalog, or something you read in insideColby. Your reasons are important to us.
6. The more information you provide in the Optional section, the better. This is in fact optional information and we certainly do not hold it against you if you choose not to complete it. But the fact is: the more we know about you, the better decision we’ll be able to make. And the social security number is often used to match your SAT and/or ACT results with your application.
7. If you have something to explain, explain it. If you had a bad second semester in your sophomore year, tell us why. If you couldn’t take Physics because it wouldn’t fit in your schedule, let us know. If you had to change schools three times, let us know the story. If a tragedy has befallen your family, it might be helpful for us to take that into consideration, and you don’t need to make it an appeal for sympathy.
8. Presentation is important. Please please please preview your application before you hit the Submit button. I read an essay yesterday in which words were clumped together without spaces. Sometimes the paragraph breaks don’t make sense. You can see this before you submit, so you can take corrective action. Also, don’t rely entirely on Spell Check: homonyms can be your undoing. And don’t swear. We’re not prudes, but all the same you should use appropriate language. It’s part of being a grown up.
And a quick note to any ED I applicants: if your decision is deferred and you are to be reconsidered in the regular pool, please don’t assume that if you made one of the gaffes noted above, you were automatically deferred. It’s unlikely that a single blunder cost you that early acceptance. If you want to revise anything, feel free to do so.

Good luck, one and all, as you juggle the completion of your applications, the start of your winter sport season, or that seasonal job at the mall, or play practice for the winter production, or the anticipation of Aunt Gladys coming over for the holidays. Or maybe all of the above.

Trees and ED's

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 18:24:58 GMT

It’s that time of year when my drive to work is punctuated by tractor-trailers full of Christmas trees heading south on I-95 from Maine’s north woods to the metropolitan markets to our south. I love seeing those tree-laden trucks pass by: they’re symbols not only of the holiday but also of our economy here in Maine. They’re probably on the road with me when I’m heading home again at the end of the day, but it’s dark in the late afternoons these days. The moving trees are a bright spot in the stretch between Thanksgiving and the end of the semester, a period that is always characterized by a certain level of frenzy and panic as college students slave away in an effort to wrap up the semester, high school seniors frantically push to finish their college applications, and much of the world is beset by consumer madness.

Inside Lunder, we are both picking up the remnants of what wasn’t quite accomplished during the hectic travel season, as well as reading the first round of Early Decision applications. Actually, I have to confess that I have not yet started to read. I have been trying to get through a backlog of e-mail, expense reports, interview write-ups and “Special Student” work, but I have a short stack of folders sitting on my desk and expect to open the first one when I finish this blog post. ED I is a great way to ease into the winter rhythm of heavy reading. The volume of applicants is a tiny fraction of the regular pool and the applicants are generally well qualified. They’ve clearly done their homework on Colby and the applications themselves are typically well done. By and large, they’re a pleasure to read. And after the constant movement on travel season, sitting still at my desk has a certain appeal. Of course, come February I will be chaffing under the flood of the regular pool, but for the moment it is a welcome respite. That’s the thing about working in education: its cyclic nature dictates working really hard on certain tasks until just when I think I can’t take it any longer – and then the whole thing changes. This crazy pattern is tailor-made for me with my short attention span.

So I’d better turn away from my computer screen and open the first folder. A week from now, the bulk of the ED reading will be over and there will be a short break in the action. Just in time to gear up for the consumer frenzy.

Moving On

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 11:18:45 GMT

Last week was probably the toughest I have ever put in at work. Luckily, with the exception of the annual Veterans Day rush on Monday, it was a relatively light week in terms of the volume that needed to be done, a very good thing indeed since we were all pretty much incapable of accomplishing anything. The feeling of devastation in Lunder actually reminded me of the way I felt after 9-11.

Friday, the day of Tom’s memorial service, almost could not have been worse in terms of the weather. A cold and heavy rain was driven by gusty winds, forcing the throngs of people who came to the service to detour around massive puddles and wrestle with umbrellas with minds of their own. Colby’s security staff offered rides to Lorimer Chapel for those who had to park wherever they could find a spot, and cars lined both sides of Mayflower Hill Drive. The service itself was simple, highlighted by reminiscences by two of Tom’s four children and wonderful music by several accomplished members of Colby’s Music Department, as well as senior Dori Smith, she of the promising opera career, recruited out of Presque Isle, Maine by Tom four years ago. The packed house exited the chapel to the strains of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” It was fitting tribute.

Then a sea of umbrellas bobbed down to the Alumni Center for a soup reception marked by several remembrances from family, friends and colleagues, most of which had an element of humor, but there were a lot of tears as well. There were pictures of Tom everywhere with grandchildren, dogs, teams of all sorts, and of course with Mimi, his wife of 46 years. I was awed by Mimi: she looked terrific and had a smile for everyone. My favorite posting of Tom was a blown-up version of his rookie baseball card from his two-year pro career with the Minnesota Twins. The room was packed with people from all eras of Tom’s life, and I recognized folks who had come from a few blocks down the hill as well as several who flew in from across the continent. Tom would have been really pleased to see the number of students who came.

At the end of the afternoon, the Lunder staff gathered at the home of our colleague Mary Rector who, with her husband Tim, invite us all over three or four times a year for a TGIF celebration. This one had been on the books for a couple of weeks, but Mary changed it this time to TGFT: Thank God for Tom. It was the biggest turnout they’ve ever had but there was actually little talk of Tom; I think we were all pretty well talked-out, and it’s safe to say that Tom would have been pretty fed up with the talk anyhow.

As it happened, my husband Dave and I were scheduled to get on yet another plane on Saturday to head for Munich, where our oldest son is working this year, and where we also have good friends. So that’s where I’m writing from at the moment. There’s a little snow on the ground and the holiday decorations are up, and I’m starting to feel better. A week of vacation couldn’t have come at a better time, quite honestly. I’m looking forward to cooking a big old American Thanksgiving dinner here in Germany for friends and family (our younger son is joining us too).

And when I return to Waterville next week, the Early Decision applications will be ready to read and life in Lunder will have switched gears from incessant travel to the reading season. Life goes on. Tom would approve.

Be like Tom.

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:58:15 GMT

Left to right: Lunder staff members Betsy Cole, Tom Kopp, Carolyn Plant, Jamie Brewster, at the wedding of our colleagues KC Ford and Matt Russ, Cape Rosier, Maine on June 16, 2007, a very happy day indeed.

Over the weekend, our colleague Tom Kopp died in a boating accident on Great Pond, and the world is a dimmer place. I don’t even know how to begin to describe this loss to those who didn’t know Tom. He had enormous heart and was selfless beyond measure in his relationships with family, friends, colleagues, students and everyone else with whom he came into contact. Unfortunately this makes Tom sound like a saint, and in a way he was, but he also had this endearing goofball quality that is making us laugh through our tears.

Tom was the guy who didn’t question the job; he just did it, whether it meant making the coffee, greeting the fifth family through the door in as many minutes, making the toughest admissions decision, shoveling the walk, delivering bad news to a counselor, or sneaking the eight-foot overgrown cactus out of the Dean’s office and performing a radical pruning. He was the guy who hung the bulletin board in your office, and then hid your shoes behind your door so you thought you were losing your mind. An incredibly active and athletic guy, he handled the torture of long, drawn-out staff meetings by creating elaborate doodles all over the pad of paper in front of him, although from across the table it appeared that he was taking meticulous notes. He had been at Colby for nearly thirty years and had encyclopedic institutional memory. I went to him with questions about travel, about working with special students, about how to deal with a demanding family, and about our arcane database system; he wasn’t a computer whiz by any means, but he found ways to make things work and he shared them gladly.

Tom built things: community in the office, relationships across the campus, and a stunning island camp on Great Pond. The latter was an amazing project involving disassembling a barn, ferrying the pieces out to the island, and reassembling them. He built a stupendous field stone fireplace out of rocks he had collected on his travels both in Maine and elsewhere; he and I shared an appreciation of rocks, and I brought them to him on my own travels from Matinicus to South Africa. The gorgeous camp floor was the old gym floor that he salvaged from the college’s athletic center.

Tom could be grumpy and his occasional outbursts were like a thunderstorm on a hot day: they cleared the air and everything looked better afterwards. He practiced safety and caution, and could always see his way out of trouble (this is why his death in this way is so ironic). But he will always be best remembered for his whacky humor. The last time I saw Tom was on Halloween at our weekly staff meeting, wearing a trench coat, porkpie hat, and Groucho glasses.

Yesterday, condolences poured into our office from all over campus, and from friends and colleagues near and far who understood the enormity of the loss to the Lunder House family. Tom and his wife Mimi raised four very successful children and have sixteen grandchildren. In his office is a photo of this large and happy clan on a street in China Town last fall. Losing Tom is heartbreaking to one and all.

This tragedy has brought home a lesson that, deep down, I already knew: I want to be like Tom. I want to get the job done, and I want to laugh whenever it’s appropriate in the process (and maybe sometimes when it’s not so appropriate). I want to enjoy my family, cook good food, and play with the dog. I want to get into better shape, and maybe collect a few more rocks in the process. I want to be remembered as someone with heart.

Nomads

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 06:34:29 GMT

Over the weekend, the Lunder staff got a message from our Fearless Leader, Director of Admissions Steve Thomas, in which he announced that our Wedensday staff meeting is canceled this week owing to too many interview requests and not enough deans in town. I am among the absent once again, and in fact am writing this from another plane somewhere high above the mid-section of America. Last week while briefly on campus, I overheard my colleague Carolyn Plant say that she lives on airplanes, and she’s right. Another Lunder pal, KC Ford is traversing Vermont this week and brought her dog with her for company. Judy Brody started the week with thousands of other visitors to the Big Apple; most of them were running the New York Marathon, but Judy has been running a marathon of her own.

I’m well aware that I’ve been whining about frantic travel in my blog this fall, and I don’t mean to make it sound as if I hate every blessed minute of it. There are elements of traveling that I adore, such as those moments when someone else is absolutely in charge and I don’t have to deal with being in charge (i.e., I get to leave flying the plane to the pilot). I love eating Mexican food to my heart’s content in Southern California, convinced as I am that there’s no such thing as decent Mexican food east of the Mississippi. I like revisiting favorite shops -- like old friends -- when I have a few spare minutes in a familiar town (Trader Joe’s in Cambridge – Joe hasn’t made his way to Maine yet; the Territory Ahead outlet in Santa Barbara, where I scored a $500 shearing jacket for $89 last month). And after a long day of visiting schools, I like it when I can catch up with an actual old friend for dinner: my elementary school chum who lives in Paris; a former Harpswell pal who moved to La Jolla ten years ago.

Granted, it is disappointing and arguably a waste of time and money when I show up at a school only to find no students to speak with (and often no counselor either). But then there are visits when I discover upon my arrival that the counselor has arranged for me to speak with a class full of sophomores who are smart, motivated and eager, but utterly unfamiliar with any college options beyond the nearest state university campus. There’s nothing wrong with that campus, but those kids deserve to know that they have a lot of options, and I love opening up that door for them.

So this is the last week of visits, more or less, and while I am looking forward to making sure I’ve paid all the bills at home and reacquainting myself with my husband, there’s a part of me that will miss the road show. In addition to the bargain jacket, I’ve experienced the Santa Ana winds for the first time, glimpsed Big Ben through the window of the Eurostar en route to the Chunnel, and learned a little Spanish from podcasts while driving to Boston. I’m adding a new country to my passport: Costa Rica, home of one of the new United World Colleges. And I’ve met lots and lots of wonderful students from all over the country and all over the world. It’s been a long, chaotic, occasionally bizarre, and generally good fall.

Smoke and Ash

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 05:35:21 GMT

The lure of big trees got the better of me last Saturday. Several days into my fall trip to Southern California, I met my colleague KC Ford in Fresno where we each spoke to a branch of the Ivy League Project, an initiative that helps high achieving students learn more about the opportunities available to them for higher education. My talk was actually east of Fresno in Parlier, and after it wrapped up around noon I succumbed to the beckoning of Sequoia National Park. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of those most enormous of trees, and the prospect of being able to see them, even briefly, was too great to pass up. So while KC headed back to the Bay Area, I took a major detour to meet General Sherman, the largest tree in existence in terms of sheer volume. I was rewarded by a beautiful drive, although I felt like an extra on the set of “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” every time I came across a grove of Sequoias.

I knew when I made my detour that I’d spend an enormous amount of time in the car that day since my final destination was Santa Barbara, a three and a half hour drive from Fresno all by itself, never mind the Sequoia jaunt. So by the time I was navigating through the Grapevine, the pass on I-5 south of the Central Valley, it was 8:30 at night and the Santa Ana winds were gusting in a big way. I turned off on the 126 at Castaic, driving through Piru and Fillmore, and by the time I got to Santa Barbara, the dry winds had whipped up a tremendous amount of ash left by last summer’s fires.

The next day, the wildfires broke out all over Southern California, including significant ones in the towns along the 126 that I had just driven through 12 hours earlier. On Tuesday when I headed south to LA, the sky over the San Fernando Valley was rimmed by a narrow band of brilliant blue just above the mountain tops, but the sky overhead was a nasty opaque white: nothing but smoke. When I got to my hotel in Santa Monica, I met fellow guests who had evacuated their homes in nearby Malibu. Although the winds have abated now and the fires are being brought under control, the air quality remains poor and the sky at sunset is a slightly frightening blood orange.

Despite the fires, I’ve visited a slew of schools and community programs, and have met some truly wonderful students. There’s nowhere like Southern California to see evidence of disparity, though. With few exceptions, all of the students I’ve encountered have been at the top of their classes, handling very challenging course loads and taking leadership roles in their schools and communities. Some of them are the children of farm laborers and will be the first in their families to go on to college; others have highly educated parents and every advantage imaginable (and some beyond my imagination, I suspect). I spoke with a group of exceptionally capable students who had never heard of the concept of the small liberal arts college; I’ve also been commiserating with counselors who are struggling under the pressure of having a substantial majority of their students applying Early Decision to elite colleges across the country. And speaking of counselors, today I visited a school where there are two college counselors for a class of 79 seniors, followed by another school where there is one college counselor for the entire population of 3400 students. The common thread among all of the students and counselors is a shared belief in the value of a good education, and I’m proud that Colby not only provides an exceptional education, but also significant financial aid to make it affordable for students from all kinds of backgrounds.

Even in the face of natural disasters, it’s always interesting to be in SoCal. Yet battling the incessant traffic and the general sprawl is beginning to wear thin. I am missing the fall foliage back in Maine, and I’m ready to make my 42 mile commute in my usual 45 minutes (unimaginable in these parts). I have one more trip for Colby to look forward to this fall, but meanwhile, I’m looking forward to doing my laundry. Just one more day of navigating the freeways, and then I’m headed home.

Local Talent

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:04:35 GMT

After a hectic trip covering a lot of territory abroad, it was very nice to focus some attention on students here in Maine. Among other places, my travel last week took me to four high schools in Mid-Coast Maine, and even though the skies were dreary and the drizzle was dismal, it’s always beautiful on the shores of Penobscot Bay, but especially so in the fall. I have spent a lot of time in that area since I first moved to Maine several decades ago. My family has a house looking out toward the mouth of the ‘Keag River and we think it’s pretty close to heaven.

My schools visits were rewarded with some great conversations with students, all girls, as it turned out. But it was old home week in a number of ways at Rockland District High School, where the Registrar is someone I’ve known for more years than either of us would care to count, and the Guidance Director is a Colby alum. One of the science teachers stopped by to introduce himself as the father of first year student, Alex Desaulniers. I had already gotten to know Alex pretty well since she works here in Lunder House and has been published in the pages of the latest Inside Colby magazine. Alex and I discovered a link right away in that her family has a small oyster farming business, an outgrowth of a science project her father started for his students several years ago. The oysters grow right in front of our house on the ‘Keag River, suspended from buoys that had been a mystery to me for years. Now that I know what’s going on with those buoys, I’m anxious to try some of the oysters.

Yesterday, I saw a couple of the same students here on campus whom I’d met on the road last week. Every fall we have an open house day especially for Maine students, which we cleverly call The Maine Event. This year’s turnout was the biggest ever: 86 students and their families from one end of the state to the other, for a total of over 150 people on campus. It was a drop-dead gorgeous fall day in Maine and we were delighted with the turnout. There was an excellent panel discussion at the beginning of the day with faculty, staff and students represented, but the star of the show was without doubt Jim Violette ’11, a graduate of Waterville High School and one of the funniest characters on campus. I actually feel a bit sorry for the guy because he was so good he’ll undoubtedly be asked to speak at every function for the next four years.

While I was in Europe, I had the opportunity to have lunch with Ian London who just graduated from Colby in May and from Mt. Ararat High School in Topsham, Maine in ’03. Ian began his Colby career in our semester abroad program for first year students in Dijon, France and then completed a second semester abroad in Geneva, Switzerland during his junior year. Degree in hand, he won a job as the assistant director for that very same program in Geneva this year and is loving being back in that spectacular city. It’s just for a year, though, since he has been accepted to law school at the University of Denver to pursue international law. I’ve also been in touch with Jamie Manzer from Emden, Maine who graduated from Colby in ’06 and is now in an international public policy program at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.

So it’s great fun to talk with students at Maine high schools about their interests and aspirations, and then to see what happens to them during and after their Colby experiences. In some small way, I’m part of that transformation, and I love it.

International Recruiting

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 19:31:40 GMT

Look, I’m not complaining. I love to travel, I really do. In fact, one of my favorite parts of traveling is often the actual travel: the time on the train, plane, subway, bus or taxi when I am being conveyed from one place to another without having to be in charge of the conveyance.

But I confess that I do get a bit defensive when I’m accused of being ungrateful for the opportunity to visit European capitals (not to mention beautiful remote locations in the countryside). I just returned on Sunday night/Monday morning from a ten-day trip that had me in London on Saturday, Paris on Sunday, Geneva on Monday, and a tiny place in Norway on Wednesday. It began with a five hour delay at the Portland Jetport which resulted in a missed connection at JFK to London, and it ended with two hours on the tarmac at JFK before my flight took off to bring me back to Portland. Along the way, the actual journeys were fine, but there were arbitrarily cancelled bookings to reinstate (including my return flight from Heathrow back to JFK) and internet access hassles to overcome. As the trip progressed, I felt as if I were leaving traces of my presence strewn across the continent: my driver’s license at the American School of Paris, my favorite travel shawl under the bed at the United World College in Norway. Because of my missed connection on the way to London, I spent a grand total of 20 hours in that city: 7 of them sleeping, 6 of them at the Fulbright College Fair, and most of the rest of the time dragging the aforementioned baggage around.

But of course there’s good news too, like the three seats to myself on the day flight I was rebooked on to London. Also, my first trip on the Eurostar through the Chunnel between London and Paris, and the TGV fast train between Paris and Geneva. The long and varied journey to the United World College in Norway: fly to Bergen, bus from the airport to the harbor, two hour boat ride to an unpronounceable town on the Songe fjord, then an hour on a bus on what must be the most beautiful road in the world before the final mile to the school by car. Some fabulous food, especially in Paris, and a lethal hour of sweater shopping in Bergen while waiting for the boat.

But the real reward is the dozens and dozens of students I met from all over the world who have an interest in coming to Mayflower Hill. I talked with students from every continent except Antarctica. I met Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hindus, some who actively practice their faiths and others who identify mostly with the culture of their religions. I encountered American expats who have never lived in the U.S., and others who were uprooted abruptly and unwillingly from their comfortable American high schools but who have grown to love their experiences abroad. There were many, many students who hold two or more passports, and the majority of the students I spoke two can converse in at least two languages. Their interests range from engineering to the arts, but there was a decided emphasis on International Studies (no surprise there).

What did I learn? Well, for one thing, it’s very easy and cheap to have a Maine driver’s license replaced on the web. Also, never travel without a spoon. Be really, really nice and really, really patient with beleaguered airline employees, and they may put you up overnight even if they don’t necessarily have to. Check under the bed every time you leave a hotel (I always do this, except for the one time that I didn’t). If traveling by train from one city to the next is a reasonable option, always take it (I actually knew this already, but it was a lesson reinforced several times over).

And there are great students everywhere. I knew this as well, but it’s a wonderful lesson to relearn, and it makes the indignities of travel worthwhile.

Thoughts on Early Decision

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 21:27:27 GMT

Summer is hanging tight in Waterville. The onset of our annual foliage extravaganza is beginning to color the landscape, but that’s the only clue that we have officially entered Autumn, my favorite season. (NB: it’s entirely possible that in future postings, I may declare every season to be my favorite at the appropriate time of the year. I would not be lying. I love living in Maine.)

But regardless of the thermometer, it’s definitely fall, and that means that application season is coming into view. In the last week or so, I have spoken with several families in conversations tinged with a hint of panic pertaining to the Early Decision process. Early Decision has been around for decades, and was designed to allow the student who has identified a clear-cut first choice college, and is willing to make a binding commitment to that school, to receive early consideration of his or her application. But in recent years it has assumed more and more prominence, and with it, increasing frenzy, especially in very competitive high schools.

As a long-time high school counselor, I have never been a heavy proponent of Early Decision because the motive for the application diverges in many cases from the original intent of the program. Those divergent reasons might include:
• Playing the odds. The truth is that the acceptance rate for students who apply Early Decision is higher than for those who apply under the regular plan. This leads people to believe that an early applicant has a much greater likelihood of being accepted at a highly selective college. Strictly speaking, that’s true. But in fact, students who apply ED to Colby tend to be highly qualified. The only advantage they have is that if we accept a student ED, we know that student will come to Colby, which is obviously much less predictable with students who are applying to a variety of schools during the regular round. My advice, for what it’s worth: apply ED if you’ve done your due diligence and truly love a school, but don’t look at ED as a strategy in playing the odds. It just doesn’t work that way.
• Everybody else is applying early. The college process has become so fraught with anxiety that students and their families are easy prey to this lemming behavior. We hear tales every year of competitive high schools where more than 80% of students apply early, and people begin to feel that all the good places will be gone if they wait for the regular round. Needless to say, this is probably the worst reason to try to choose a college. And there are lots of places at many wonderful colleges.
• I just want to get this over with!! Another result of the mounting anxiety and pressure on students is the completely understandable desire to extricate themselves from the situation. ED may well be a means of extrication, but it is not a smart response.

A subset of the above is falling in love with the first college that the family visits. It all seems perfect, so why bother to look farther? As tempting as this may seem, it shortchanges the student.

Choosing a college is a very sophisticated and complex process. From the standpoint of adolescent development, it’s nearly always the most complicated and at times overwhelming decision that a high school student has ever faced. Like other developmental milestones, students approach college choices at different rates. Herein lies the root of my chief complaint about ED: lots and lots of kids are not really ready to make this kind of commitment in the fall, but the pressure is intense and sometimes irresistible. Add to this the anxiety that families often feel (along these lines: where my child enrolls in college is my report card as a parent), and voila: students rush into decisions that should probably wait a few more months as their ideas continue to evolve.

Early Decision grabbed another piece of the spotlight last year when several of the largest, most influential, and wealthiest universities in the country dropped the program altogether. For the most part, other colleges did not follow suit immediately; Colby does not have any designs on a similar move at the moment. When used appropriately, Early Decision is effective for both students and colleges. But if I could wave my magic wand, I’d blot out the frenzy.

Off and Running

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 18:53:36 GMT

This post has been two weeks in coming as my good intentions have repeatedly been sidelined by many pressing issues: the last onslaught of interviews before our prospective students all headed back to school, the arrival of 468 new students and the opening of the new addition to the Cotter Union, COOT departures/COOT returns, and the beginning of the academic year. And already, the first week of classes is over!

It was so exciting for me this year to see the new students arrive. There is always a big reception late in the afternoon of move-in day attended by the first year students and assorted family members, along with various faculty and staff. This year it was held in the Pulver Pavilion, a new addition that provides a big gathering space in the Cotter Union. It was opening day for Pulver as well as for the students, and the space was full of excitement. I made an effort to find several students with whom I had worked especially closely over the past year, and it was wonderful to see them here on Mayflower Hill. I left the reception with a real sense of satisfaction that the Class of 2011 is finally here, and I know these new students will make some great contributions to the life of the college.

The orientation process changed a bit this year, and the next day had a more academic flavor as students, together with faculty and alumni panels, considered the notion of Good Work, a concept promoted by Professor Howard Gardner of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. Then last Thursday all the newly arrived students headed off for the outdoor portion of the orientation process: four days spent on one of more than 50 COOT trips, some pretty hard core and others considerably less strenuous. Safety is a priority on these expeditions and there were no medical emergencies among our students, although two groups participated in the helicopter evacuation of an injured through-hiker on the Appalachian Trail. There were a couple of other adventures as well, but everyone arrived back on campus safe and sound.

Placement tests, meetings with advisors, and the return of the upper classmen, among other things, filled Monday and Tuesday of this week, and then classes got off to a good start on Wednesday. Athletic teams are practicing (and the men’s soccer team had exhibition matches against the squad from Ireland’s University of Cork), The Echo has produced two issues, and the activities fair has recruited loads of students for all sorts of clubs and activities. So we are definitely off and running.

Meanwhile, over here in Lunder, we’re madly trying to plan our fall travel schedules. Most of us are incurable travelers and love the opportunity to visit different parts of the country and the world as we seek to connect with prospective students interested in Colby. But it is a hugely complicated process. We need to schedule around various on-campus events, attempt to accommodate college fairs and visit programs at schools far and wide, and make sure that the office isn’t left completely vacant in case someone needs an interview! There are plane tickets to buy, hotels and cars to reserve, and endless phone calls and e-mails to the high schools we seek to visit. We plan interviews on the road and sometimes try to visit with the alumni volunteers who help us out in various cities. It’s a huge jigsaw puzzle with multiple layers, and if you strolled into any of our offices right now, you’d see maps, folders, invitations, calendars and other detritus covering our desks and, in some cases, our floors. E-mail inboxes are full to bursting, and of course there’s not a high school in the country that can return our phone calls, since things are crazier there than they are here.

And with that, I’ll sign off since there is a student waiting to interview with me. But just before I go, I want to share a link to the blog of a parent who dropped his son off to begin his Colby career last week. I think this dad has captured the mix of anticipation and loss that parents experience when their children go off to college (myself included). A word to prospective parents who are reading this: you too will reach this point!

http://sciencespirit.blogspot.com/2007/08/empty-nest.html

(Used with permission, of course!)

Keeping Lunder Humming in the Summer

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 21:31:59 GMT

The wave of visitors continues to build, and this week we began to hold our twice-daily information sessions in a classroom in the new Diamond Building located adjacent to Lunder House. It’s one of our larger classrooms with a capacity of 60, and nearly every chair was filled during my morning session today. As I walked back over to Lunder, I noticed 4 groups going out for the 11:30 tour, which is twice as many as we’d see on a busy day in the fall. The student tour guides were expertly shepherding their charges off on different routes, and I marveled at the energy they project for Colby, even after months of giving several tours a day. In addition to giving tours, our summer workers answer the phones, greet our visitors, make sure there’s enough coffee in the morning and bottled water in the afternoon, and help out in the mail and file rooms. Beyond that, they do anything and everything else that might come up: rearranging furniture, watering plants, running errands all over campus, assembling binders. A couple of them even drove downtown one Friday afternoon to try to start my stranded car while I was doing an interview back here on campus.

So who are these youthful workhorses who make everything go over the summer? Meet the crew:

Katy Bizier is spending her second summer with us after completing her spring semester abroad at the University of Edinburgh. A biochem major, Katie came to Colby from all the way across the Kennebec River in Winslow, Maine. In addition to working here, she’s also doing an internship this summer with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. Katy is an amazing knitter!

Lindsay Tolle is here for her second summer as well. She’s an American Studies major who’s involved in a number of leadership positions in various organizations like the League of Progressive Voters. She’ll be a senior this fall and came to Colby from Witchita, Kansas.

Regular readers of this blog might remember an early post about Gen Triganne, who is also spending summer #2 with us. She also did an internship in Lunder last January so she really knows the drill. Gen is a history major and captain of the women’s ice hockey team; she’s thinking of pursuing admissions work at a boarding school after she graduates from Colby next May. Gen’s from just outside of Montreal, Quebec.

Cassie Newell spent the summer of ’06 elsewhere, but she was with us in ’05 so she’s got plenty of experience as well. She’s the classic liberal arts student with a major in Chemistry and minors in math and Russian (and interests in German and Arabic). She graduated from the largest high school in New Hampshire, and she’s a serious Red Sox fan. She’s also an avid badminton player.

Joel Pitt came to Colby because he learned about the Jan Plan course in blacksmithing from his tour guide, and he’s been spreading the blacksmithing gospel ever since. He’s an anthro major from the Buffalo area who loves the outdoors. He’ll be a COOT leader once again this fall, and you can see his picture in a couple of shots of the annual Johnson Pond Regatta on our website.

Hailing from Thomaston, Maine, Thora Maltais is also a biochem major who spent Jan Plan this year in Quito, Ecuador. She liked it so much that she plans to go abroad again for Jan Plan ’08. She’s an HR (Colby-speak for Head Resident, sometimes known elsewhere as an RA, or Resident Assistant) and she’s also an EMT and part of Colby Emergency Rescue.

Vilmarys Pichardo just finished her first year at Colby. Coming to Waterville from New York City, she’s interested in social justice issues and she likes running, especially on the college’s cross country trails in the Arboretum. She’s a regular at Colby’s performance poetry gigs, and is leaning toward a major in the social sciences (psych or anthro).

Bio major Jocelyn Burke is a rising senior from Billerica, Massachusetts who is heading for a career as a veterinarian; in fact, she’s done an internship all summer with a local vet in addition to working in Lunder. This morning she discovered an unusually cool caterpillar on a car in our lot and brought it in for all of us to admire! She swims freestyle on the varsity team.

So that’s the line-up. We are very lucky to have such great students working for us in the summer -- they are indispensable. We get to be pretty tight with this crowd as they see the whole range of action here, the good and the not-so-good. Come and meet them!
we began

What have we been doing all summer?

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 15:54:07 GMT

It has been a great summer thus far, with mostly good weather and flocks of prospective students and their families taking advantage of vacation time to take in a few colleges in Vacationland. The pace of interviews picked up quickly in July, and many of the remaining days in August are fully booked with appointments. (But that shouldn’t stop you from coming to see the campus: there are four student-led campus tours and two information sessions Monday through Friday, with an additional tour on Saturday morning at 11:00. You can always schedule an interview later here on campus or closer to your home with a Colby alum or one of our colleagues during the fall travel season. See www.colby.edu/admissions/visit for details.)

I have met some really interesting students during my interviews this summer. There were two girls who spent seven weeks cycling across the country with six classmates to raise money for cancer research; both said their views of America were changed forever. This morning, I spoke with a boy who has his pilot’s license and spent some time this summer volunteering in Guyana with Wings of Hope, a humanitarian flying service. I’ve met two avid woodworkers and both are now excited about our Jan Plan furniture making class. Another girl’s eyes shone when she talked about her interest in writing poetry, and she reintroduced me to a poet, Louise Gluck, whom I hadn’t read in a number of years. Two equestrian instructors told me about their experiences with therapeutic riding, and I’ve talked with two students who are seriously interested in careers with the FBI. An ice hockey player told me that he has always felt a calling to join ROTC (we have an affiliation with Army ROTC at the University of Maine), while a serious tennis player can’t imagine not following both of her parents to med school. I’ve interviewed American students living in Luxembourg and the Democratic Republic of Congo; city-dwellers from New York, Milwaukee, Vancouver and London; students from tiny towns like Duvall, Washington and Calais, Maine; and of course quite a few from the Boston area. Naturally, there have been a number of conversations about Harry Potter; I finally wrestled the book away from one of our sons but am only on page 210, so I can’t yet participate in a full discussion.

In between interviews, we’re all getting a bit frantic about the upcoming travel season. Each of us manages several territories and we try to visit a variety of schools in each of them every fall. Our visits also include opportunities for students in those regions to schedule interviews, and we sometimes are able to make time to meet with the alumni who live in the area and support our admissions efforts by staffing college fairs and providing alumni interviews. My territories include Boston and Cambridge in Massachusetts, Southern California, and Rhode Island. In addition, I do some travel in Europe (and read the applications from there as well as from India and Canada). No matter where we go, all of us have somewhat complicated planning to do for our travels, and we must also assure that there are enough staff members on hand here in Waterville for our fall visitors.

Each of us has other responsibilities over the summer: planning the postcards and posters that schools and students receive in the mail; organizing fall open house events on campus; hosting visiting tour groups from Upward Bound and other organizations; staffing college fairs at various summer programs, etc.

Lest you think it’s all work and no play, we have our own vacations. Every year, I spent a week in July on the tiny island of Matinicus, 20 miles off the coast of Maine, where I rent a wonderful cabin with minimal amenities (i.e. no running water) that’s located just above a quiet sandy beach with a couple of other islands in the distance. Usually it’s just our dog, a pile of books, and me, but this year one of our sons joined me for a few days and my husband came out for an overnight (which is a major undertaking, believe me!).

But the event of the summer was the wedding of our very own KC Ford and Matt Russ. They met several years ago while working here in Lunder House and we are all very fond of them both. They were married on a beautiful June weekend on the coast at Cape Rosier, and nearly all of our colleagues were able to attend the festivities. It was the most fun wedding I have ever been to. And when things seem impossibly busy on a hot and humid afternoon here in Lunder, all we have to do is think back to that utterly lovely Saturday afternoon in mid-June when we watched our friends join together, and then danced the night away under the stars by the sea.

Vacationland indeed!

Leaving Africa

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 20:12:42 GMT

Two weeks ago, I was nearing the end of a trip to Southern Africa where I visited five schools on behalf of Colby. It was my first journey to Africa, aside from a brief visit to Morocco a decade ago, and it was an eye-opening experience in many ways. What follows is most of an e-mail message to my colleagues back in Lunder House, which I want to share with a wider audience through this blog. Thanks for reading it.
--Dory

The long journey home begins later today, and I'll be glad to get home. But this has been a good adventure and I am coming back with a few ideas about bringing African students to Colby.

My last school appointment was Thursday at 3:00, leaving me with the better part of the daylight hours on my own, and so I went to the Mokolodi Nature Reserve (www.mokolodi.com) a 10,000 acre park that's quite close to Gaborone. Being the one and only tourist for the 8:00 a.m. game drive, I had the guide to myself on the brilliant fall morning, a little chilly for me, but downright cold for people from these parts. We saw lots of creatures great and small, from amazing birds to elephants and giraffes. The guide was incredibly knowledgeable and I learned an amazing amount about flora and fauna as well as the environmental pressures facing the Botswana bush, and got a sense of the wide-open landscape, a real pleasure after spending most of my time in cities (or what passes for cities in mostly rural Swaziland and Botswana).

The Maru-a-Pula School (www.maruapula.org) is literally around the corner from my hotel, so I walked over there for my afternoon appointment where I did a presentation for about 25 students and 3 staff. The kids had been prepped a bit by the principal, Andy Taylor, an American around my age who grew up in New York City, went to Middlebury, and then transferred to Wesleyan when he ran out of African Studies courses; it turns out that his sister lives in Falmouth, Maine. He is all about promoting his students in the best possible way. The school was founded in the early 70's with the express idea of providing a really rigorous education to children of all races, and it was done purposefully in Gaborone in the face of apartheid 15 km across the border to South Africa. There are about 600 kids in Forms I - VI, 50+% Batswana and the rest multi-national from the expat community. About 20% of the students are boarders. They've had strong success in A-levels and their alums are in universities all over the world. They also have connections to U.S. prep schools and every year after the 6th form graduates in November, a few of them are chosen for exchanges at Deerfield, Brooks, Taft, Hotchkiss, and Catlin Gable (among others) for six weeks. In fact there was a boy in my presentation wearing a Brooks tee shirt; he'd just arrived back in Botswana the previous day from his experience (and he's very interested in Colby). He comes from a small village about 400 km from Gaborone, and came to Maru-a-Pula after he ran out of classes at his village school. He got straight A's in his 4 A-levels: bio, chem, physics and math.

Andy Taylor remains a member of the Riverside Church in New York City, which is hugely active in social justice issues (no surprise given its long-time leadership by William Sloane Coffin), and they've become interested in supporting scholarships to Maru-a-Pula for Batawana AIDS orphans. As it happened, a good-sized group from Riverside was in Gaborone for a visit to the school, and Andy invited me to join them at his house on campus last night where some activities had been arranged to introduce the Riverside people to some of the MaP students. The kids were younger than the ones I met earlier in the day and were bright, lively and engaging. It didn't dawn on me until the very end of the event that of course these poised, articulate kids were some of the AIDS orphans being sponsored at MaP. After the students left, Andy talked a bit about the school's goals in educating these children. Some highlights:

6,000 people die of AIDS every day in sub-Saharan Africa. "That's twice as many people every single day as those who died on 9-11," noted Andy who had been living in New York on 9-11.

The majority of those deaths leave children behind, making the orphan crisis a monumental one

MaP's goal is to provide a first-class education to these kids because of the on-going need for leadership from those who have been directly affected by this situation "as opposed to the middle- and upper middle-class blacks who have traditionally become Africa's leaders," said Andy

Right now there are 22 AIDS orphans being educated at MaP; their goal is at least 60 -- 10% of the student body

As you can tell, I'm really impressed by the school, the quality of the education and the teachers, and most of all the students. Between Mokolodi in the morning and Maru-a-Pula well into the evening, I had a great day seeing how Botswana is bucking the odds in Africa.

By the time you read this, I'll have begun the trip home. I have a tight connection in Johannesburg tonight and an interminable wait at JFK tomorrow afternoon that could be mitigated if I can get on an earlier Jet Blue flight, so keep your fingers crossed. See you soon.

College Fair, Betsy and a Hiatus

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Thu, 17 May 2007 03:26:17 GMT

I just returned from an evening college fair at Cheverus High School in Portland. As fairs go, it was one of the best, not in terms of adding a huge quantity of prospective students to our mailing list, but very satisfying in the number and quality of the exchanges with parents and students. In addition to Cheverus, other area high schools were represented, and I was left with the very pleasant impression that the students and families were excited and a little anxious about the whole college process. Clearly absent was an excess of undue anxiety, jockeying for position, “helicopter parents,” and other frantic indicators of the frenzy that applying to college has become in many places. The gym was full of tables with college representatives from around the U.S. and Canada, but there was plenty of space for people to make their way along the aisles, and each college had its own full table – the luxury of space! Comments made from both sides of the table were easily heard, and the questions were good ones. In general, I was reminded once again that living in Maine has many rewards, one of which is a relatively sane approach to life. I talked with students interested in sciences, international pursuits, various approaches to economics, and lots of genuine “undecideds,” in addition to hockey players, community volunteers, outdoor enthusiasts, theater denizens and a smattering of tech-types. It was good to see earnest, honest juniors beginning the search for the right fit, whether it might be Colby or any one of the tremendous number of choices available: a pleasant evening indeed.

On a different note, last Friday, we said goodbye to Betsy Cole, one of our two receptionists, when she retired after nineteen years at Colby. Betsy graciously welcomed visitors to Lunder in person, over the phone, and via e-mail on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, a warm, reassuring presence for all who walked through the door. She made sure everyone had whatever was needed: a campus map, restaurant recommendation or directions to the next college on the circuit, and she did it with intelligence, class and wit. When first meeting Betsy, you’d reasonably assume that she’s a native Mainer, but in fact she was born and raised in New York City where she graduated from the Chapin School and then from Vassar. Family life brought her to Maine, and she found herself for a time in the role of college counselor at her sons’ school before migrating to Colby. Those sons are long grown, raising families of their own in Colorado, and Betsy has willingly restricted her visits to them to accommodate Lunder’s needs, just as she has limited herself to half-weeks at her terrific summer house on the Southport Island so she could staff the desk during our busy summer months. But no longer: she rightfully decided that enough was enough, and so we gave her a great send-off last Friday. We miss her already. Many, many thanks, Betsy, for your good sense and your good humor.

And finally, this is blog entry 21, and I am ready for a bit of a break. Truth be told, this is Lunder’s slow season, a reward for all the work of the fall, winter and early spring, but it offers little material to reflect upon. In addition, I’m about to take off for several weeks of travel for Colby and may not be able to access the web regularly. So check back in a couple of weeks for the next update from Lunder, when I’ll have a few travel tales to share.

Babies, Weddings, Wait Lists and GIS

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Wed, 09 May 2007 17:07:40 GMT

This morning as I was driving to work, I circled around the back of the campus as I always do and came across a serene and lovely scene: a perfectly calm Johnson Pond, reflecting the library spire and other signature Colby-style Georgian brick architecture plus newly budding willows and emerald green grass rolling down the knoll toward the water. And I thought, “Man, what a difference three weeks makes!” Three weeks ago was that huge Northeaster storm that left snow then massive puddles punctuated by endless blown-down branches littered all over the campus. But this morning, the grounds crews were mowing away, sending up that great scent of freshly cut grass into the sunny New England morning.

We are moving in fits and starts here in Lunder: there is some wait list action which we’re approaching in small batches, resulting in a flurry of phone calls interspersed with long pauses while we wait for students to decide whether to accept the offers we’ve just made. To keep us occupied in between times, there are some celebrations among the Lunder denizens. One of our colleagues delivered her first baby early this morning to much excitement all around. Another is getting married next month; she and her fiancé actually met here in Lunder when he also worked in Admissions. There has been lots of excitement over the on-going preparations, including an impromptu wedding dress fashion show one day last week (which is another story all together). Another colleague will be shipping off to graduate school this summer, and we’re all trying to think how we’ll manage without the stash of food he maintains for us in his office.

This morning after our weekly staff meeting, we all went on a field trip to the new Diamond Building next door, where we spent an hour learning about the wonders of the fabulous GIS lab and the ways that students are using this technology across the disciplines. In the new facility is a state-of-the-art computer lab, and students also have access on college-owned computers to GIS software all over campus. But the very best GIS resource is Manny Gimond, newly hired GIS and Quantitative Analysis specialist, whose most recent position was with the Kennedy Space Center. Manny assists professors and students across the curriculum, often in the sciences and social sciences, although at the recent Student Research Symposium, there was a student who had utilized GIS technology in a music project. Geographic Information Systems skills have been tremendously helpful to recent Colby grads in job hunting and grad school placements; with the new facilities and regular updating of the software, our students will continue to enhance their resumes with this useful tool. I am a huge fan of Google Earth, and I was completely absorbed by the possibilities of this much more elaborate and sophisticated toy. Maybe I can use it to plan my travel next fall…

Pacing Ourselves

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Wed, 02 May 2007 20:05:58 GMT

There is an unbelievable number of things going on at Colby these days: interesting speakers nearly every day; lots of sports (including a nice women’s lacrosse win over Bowdoin in the NESCAC quarterfinals); the Student Research Symposium; numerous end-of-the-year celebrations for everyone from the international student host families to the student admissions volunteers; and a week’s worth of one-act plays every afternoon on the steps of Miller Library, to name just a few. Students are beginning to get that fevered end-of-the –semester look with papers and presentations looming, but at the same time the weather has finally turned reliably warm, and each afternoon brings i-Play and pick-up games of every thing from whiffle ball to soccer to that fine Colby tradition, campus golf (played with a tennis ball).

Meanwhile over here in Lunder, colleagues are out and about at spring college fairs all over New England and beyond. Those of us not on the road quietly noted the passing of the May 1 reply deadline yesterday, knowing that several more days still need to elapse before the mail brings the last of the enrollment deposits. At today’s staff meeting, we decided that we would reconvene late Friday morning to hash out the particulars of the wait list: whether we’ll use it, and if so, how it will be used. In this year of record numbers of applications and low percentages of acceptances at colleges all over the country, there’s no foolproof way to predict who’s going to enroll. So we are still in a state of suspense. The only clear trend is that a higher number of international students have accepted our offers than in past years.

There have been a number of questions about the wait list that have come to us through various sources. In past years, the decision to use the wait list is followed by devising a game plan, including how many offers to make and what characteristics we are looking for to round out the class. Approximately half of the students who were offered a position on our wait list have chosen to remain in that category, so there is a good number of students with a variety of interesting qualities from which to choose.

Typically, we make wait list offers incrementally rather than as a large group, in order to guard against an unpredictable tide of responses. Once a selection is made, the staff member responsible for that student’s region is usually the one to make the initial call to the student to gauge his or her interest in coming to Colby. We ask the student for a verbal response within twenty-four hours, and if the answer is yes, a letter and acceptance packet is sent out.

For all concerned, we hope this process will not be prolonged, but we know that other colleges may also use their wait lists, which can have an effect on our enrollment. Patience, I’m afraid, is the order of the day for the students still waiting for an offer, and for us as well. Meanwhile, high school seniors have a lot to look forward to before graduation, just as our students are staying very busy here in Waterville.

Waiting for the Results

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 17:06:11 GMT

It’s a calm day at Lunder, the calmest since we mailed the decisions on March 28. The 8:30 campus tour was comprised of one father and son duo, and for the first time in months, there was no one present for the daily10:45 information session. All in all, this is terrific, because it’s giving all of us an opportunity to catch up on some of the details that were brushed aside by the press of applications all winter long, and then by the month-long whirlwind of visiting admitted seniors and exploring juniors and all of their families on campus together. Two days ago we hosted our last Open House -- what a difference in the weather from the previous Monday! The relentless northeaster storm was replaced by the highest temperatures since last September: sunny and in the 80’s. There was an excellent crowd, and we all have our fingers crossed that we’ll see a good number of those students enroll.

Meanwhile, two of my colleagues are hard at work considering applications from students who would like to transfer to Colby. The transfer situation is always a difficult one because our spaces are limited; we simply don’t lose many students once they’ve chosen to enroll. Yet we receive some wonderful applications from students who for one reason or another made a college choice that has turned out not to be satisfactory. Fortunately for me, I don’t have to play a role in the transfer deliberations and my sympathies go out to my colleagues who are continuing to read applications.

While things are on the quiet side in Lunder at the moment, they’re really humming all over campus: the last big theater production of the year; the African American Film Series (just one of many film series on campus); the annual room draw; an address by Senator Rick Santorum; Earth Day events; the International Extravaganza; all the spring sports teams in full swing; recitals by senior music majors; the Student Research Symposium; Q&A with Maine’s Attorney General – not to mention that the semester is winding up in less than three weeks. The atmosphere on campus is definitely on the hectic side.

One of the most interesting and fun accolades recently won by Colby is the decisive victory of the our Women’s Woodsmen Team at last weekend’s annual Dartmouth Woodsmen’s Weekend. Not only did our women’s team soundly beat the other women’s teams, but in fact they amassed the largest point total of any of the 30 teams competing and brought home the enormous 4-foot trophy! In case you are not familiar with woodsmen’s events, you might have been surfing through TV channels from your local cable provider at some point, and discovered one of those extreme sports shows where people are competing against each other by throwing axes, rolling logs, sawing through tree trunks, etc. That’s what Woodsmen’s teams do. Last week when I was in Los Angeles, I had dinner with five Colby alumni, one of whom was a Woodsman while here in Waterville. It’s not the kind of skill you’re likely to learn just anywhere, and it may not be a typical resume booster, but it is the type of thing you’ll look back to fondly, and it certainly teaches an appreciation for a different kind of life than most of us live. But students mostly pursue it because it’s different, interesting and fun, and they certainly had fun last weekend.

A week from now, things in Lunder will be much busier as we face the numbersof enrolled students and whether we’ll be using the wait list. Until now, I am just happy to weed out the piles on my desk and clean out my in-box. Happy Spring!

Distant View

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 05:13:03 GMT

Greetings from Southern California, where I am traveling for Colby this week. Each spring, even as the high school seniors are making up their minds where to attend college in the fall, the cycle continues with events for current juniors. Part of my area of geographic responsibility includes Southern California, and I flew out here on Sunday for a week of Colby-related events.

I was lucky to get out when I did, given that Sunday was the beginning of the enormous storm system that continues to engulf parts of the Northeast even as I write this. It has posed a major problem because Colby, like many colleges, holds a series of open house events during the month of April for accepted students, and traditionally the busiest of all of these busy days is Patriots Day. (Digression: Patriots Day commemorates the beginning of the American Revolution and is celebrated officially only in Massachusetts and Maine. It falls on the Monday closest to April 19; see Longfellow’s poem “Paul Revere’s Ride.”) Patriots Day occurs during the public school vacation week in Maine and Massachusetts, our two biggest states in terms of enrolled students. So you can imagine that the orchestrations to welcome the crowds of students and families are complex. In fact, there was a respectable turnout on the Colby campus, according to my colleagues back at Lunder, although nowhere near what we’ve seen in years past. The good news is that the next open house is this coming Friday, and the weather forecast looks good.

Meanwhile, last night I attended a reception in Los Angeles for accepted students from this area. It was held at the home of a former Colby student, and the weather here was just fine. There was a cozy turnout, so cozy, in fact, that the last guests left an hour after the event was supposed to conclude. We were pleased about that, though, since it meant that people were enjoying talking about Colby. In addition to accepted students and their families, we also had several Colby alumni and the parents of a currently enrolled student in attendance. The best part was seeing the accepted students congregate together to get to know each other. Here’s hoping it was the beginning of long-term friendships.

The previous night, I had dinner with a small group of area alumni who help us with our admissions efforts in Southern California. It was a diverse and interesting group, with graduates from 1987 to 2004. Three of the five are native Angelenos who returned here after their Colby experiences; two were New Englanders who came here to live and work. The really interesting part for me was learning how people have applied their Colby educations. Here’s a rundown of their majors, along with their current jobs:
Government + East Asian Studies: Field Deputy for a State Senator and president of the local board of education
English: Upper School Director at a Los Angeles college prep day school
Government: Music publishing industry
East Asian Studies: TV producer (most recently: “The Biggest Loser”)
Economics: Financial analyst (but enrolling this fall in grad school for international development)
While it’s hardly a representative sample of Colby’s majors, it does include three of the four most popular majors (Government, Econ and English). They are a really interesting group of people with one major thing in common: huge enthusiasm for Colby. It was a nice change of pace for me, reminding me why we do what we do in Lunder House.

I’ll be spending the rest of the week visiting high schools and some community-based programs that support first generation college-bound students here in greater Los Angeles as well as in Fresno. It’s always fun to come out to California, our number 5 state in terms of enrolled students. It’s about as far away from Colby as you can get while still remaining in the continental U.S., and the number one reason those students cite for choosing Colby is that it's completely different. Some of them come back to this area after they graduate, but we hook a few in Maine as well.

Next week, I’ll be back in Lunder, and we’ll be just a few days away from the enrollment deadline. The suspense is building!

In closing, my thoughts are never far from Virginia Tech, the scene of such unfathomable tragedy this week. I know I speak for my colleagues in Lunder House in extending our heartfelt sympathy to all of those affected by the events of April 16.

The Shoe is on the Other Foot

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 19:10:58 GMT

Every morning these days, Lunder fills with students at various points in the college process. Today, they have mostly been juniors on spring break embarking on their first tour of colleges; in my information session this morning, I had families from Franklin, Kentucky; Seattle, Washington; West Essex, New Jersey; Petaluma, California; and a small school group from Lee Academy here in Maine, about two hours north of Waterville. Some of these juniors seemed remarkably focused; others were clearly befuddled by the enormity of this whole deal.

There was just one accepted senior this morning, here with his parents for their third visit to campus. The student went off to sit in on an economics class while his mother and father attended my session in Lunder. I remember interviewing the student last summer; he’s an American who has lived near London for nearly seven years, attending an American school just outside of the city. I’m glad he made it through the process and is serious enough about Colby to come and see us yet again. His ideas about college have evolved over the course of the last year, and now he’s come to “kick the tires” one last time. I hope he chooses Colby, but of course the final decision is his.

Last Monday we held an Open House for accepted seniors from our home state of Maine, and had students and parents from all over the state here on campus for a morning of presentations, tours, classes and even a 9:00 a.m. song by one of our a cappella groups, the Colby 8. Rolling out of bed to sing first thing in the morning is heroic duty! Helping us out were loyal Colby alums, current students and several members of the Board of Trustees, all from Maine. Traditionally Maine has been our second largest state in terms of enrolled students and we want to be sure it stays that way. There are three more Open Houses this month with special tours, panels for students and parents, opportunities to visit classes, and the chance to pick up that Colby sweatshirt at the bookstore. My colleague KC Ford has spent the last few weeks planning all the details from name tags to refreshments to balloons that mark the way to Lunder.

Of course students can choose to visit Colby any day of the week, and in some ways they get the most intimate look at the campus by coming on their own. We provide visitors with a big list of classes that they might attend as well as a meal ticket for one of our dining halls; if visitors are musicians, athletes, research biologists or what-have-you, they’re encouraged to contact the department(s) of interest before arriving on campus to arrange for a meeting time with professors, coaches or advisors. Don’t miss our wonderful art museum, and do investigate our three libraries, the athletic center, and our newest building, Diamond. Pick up a copy of the Colby Echo and listen to WMHB. Check out the Calendar of Events on the webpage and attend a game, a lecture or a performance. Most importantly, talk to students. The college process is still all-too-fresh in their minds, and they’ll gladly tell you what they think about Colby.

Each year, accepted students are offered an opportunity to spend the night on campus in addition to all of the day activities suggested above. We had a very limited number of slots available from the outset and this year they filled up so fast it made our heads spin. My colleague who coordinates this program is really dismayed at having to tell so many hopeful students that ironically enough, they’re wait listed for an overnight! Let me put in a plea for understanding the situation: we truly are sorry that we can’t accommodate everyone, but we promise that the most important aspects of the college can be experienced in a good thorough day visit.

So whether you’re a junior or a senior, we’re happy to welcome you to Colby among the steady stream of April visitors. Let us know what we can do to help you make your best decision.

Truths and Rumors

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 03:02:40 GMT

Early readers of this blog might remember that I used up some space complaining about our lack of snow in January. This being New England, we are getting some of that missing snow at the moment, much to our collective dismay. Of course, there is a little part of me that’s delighted to have another weekend of skiing at Sugarloaf, but the admissions part of me worries about students coming to visit Colby in what is arguably the least attractive time of year: Mud Season; today, though, it’s Mud-and-Snow Season.

The letters having mostly arrived at their destinations, we are beginning to see some of the responses to those decisions we wrestled with all winter. A few eager students have already sent in their enrollment deposits, although we know that most will weigh their options until later in the month, a wise move given the impact of choosing where to spend the next four years. Others are turning up on campus to “kick the tires.” Early this afternoon, a student I’d met in San Diego during my travels last fall arrived at Lunder House with her dad, having taken a red-eye to Boston overnight and then driven the three hours from Logan Airport in the snow. She was excited to sit in on a class so Gen Triganne took her right off to a writing seminar while her father attended the afternoon admissions information session. Although she had seen snow before in California’s mountains, she had never actually been in a snowstorm, and she was clearly enjoying this last gasp of winter more than the rest of us.

There have been lots of phone calls and e-mails about the decisions as well, many of them from students who find themselves on the wait list or with an offer of mid-year admission accompanied by the first semester at the Colby programs in Dijon or Salamanca. Neither of these is a clear-cut decision, which leads to some consternation on the part of the student, parents and sometimes the high school counselor. For international students (who make up a substantial portion of the readers of this blog), these situations can be especially confusing.

Regarding the wait list, we are not able to make any offers until we are pretty sure how many students will choose to enroll at Colby, and since there is always a flurry of enrollment deposits right at the end of April (see weighing options, above), we don’t turn to the wait list until after May 1. Therefore students interested in attending a U.S. college will have to make a deposit somewhere else, knowing that they’ll have to forfeit that money should they be offered a place at Colby. It’s an odd system to be sure, but a familiar one to most American students since nearly all American colleges follow this same plan. Colby expects that some of the students who have made a deposit will later contact us to say they’ve chosen to go elsewhere, a phenomenon known as “summer melt.” Fortunately we are generally able to predict fairly soon after May 1 whether we’ll use our wait list.

Students on the wait list or with an offer of mid-year admission often feel like second-class citizens compared to those who are offered fall admission. The fact is that most students applying to Colby are fully capable of doing the work, and we certainly wouldn’t place students in either of the two categories if we felt they wouldn’t be able to measure up.

As for mid-year admission, this is perhaps the most confounding letter – and the most unexpected one. Many of the calls we receive about this have the same underlying question: is there any way that I can begin at Colby in Waterville in September? The short answer is, “No.” The slightly longer answer is this: a mid-year student can choose to exchange this guaranteed place in the Class of 2011 for a spot on the wait list, but the wait list is not ranked and no additional consideration is given. In other words, unlike the airlines, there is no Stand-by status. We don’t recommend it; furthermore, we know that there are plenty of students on the wait list who would be delighted to have a guaranteed place in the Class of 2011.

What we do recommend, however, is very carefully reviewing the brochure enclosed in the decision letter and then directing questions about the program itself to the Off-Campus Study Office. Staff members there are very excited about this option; in fact, if there is available space, it’s not at all unusual to have students admitted for the fall semester in Waterville apply to join the program in Dijon or Salamanca.

And finally, there are rumors swirling everywhere. I encountered a troublesome one today via a high school counselor who had heard from a parent that Colby will only accept one student each year from smaller schools. This parent was concerned that if another student from his child’s school chose to enroll at Colby, then his own wait-listed student would not have a chance of being admitted after May 1. I was happy to dispel that rumor, since wait list decisions are truly individual ones and not dependent on school enrollment.

To one and all, good luck in making your decision. If you are a good enough student to apply to Colby in the first place, then you will certainly have good options before you.

P.S. Check out the new website. It’s full of writing and photos about Colby by our students and is a great way to get a sense of what life is all about here.

On their way to YOU!

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 20:48:36 GMT

Here’s a fuzzy picture that I took with my cell phone of the mailman sitting on one of the boxes of decision letters in his truck, surrounded by a few of the Lunder House staff in their finest work clothes. We all carried the boxes merrily out the door and the letters are now on their way to you!

The Big Day

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 14:53:11 GMT

By the time this post is up on the web, there will be only about 4 hours left before all the decision letters leave Lunder House. The recent weeks have been an anxious time for everyone: students and their families waiting to find out the results of the application; admissions staff working overtime to make sure all the pieces are in place. There have been a few unforeseen problems this week: a key brochure needed for some of the letters won’t be delivered to us until late this morning; and yesterday, the scheduled location fell through for one of the receptions that we organize for accepted students in April. This left my colleague who oversees these programs scrambling for a new venue, but all’s well that ends well: a new site was secured just this morning.

Tomorrow (Thursday, March 29), applicants will receive an e-mail message with instructions on how to view their decision letter on-line. This service will be available on Friday afternoon after 5:00 p.m., local Waterville time, so those of you who live far away will be able to access this information in a timely way. I thought I’d focus the rest of this post on offering some insight into the various decisions one might receive.

Let’s start with the Deny letter. There are many, many of these going out since the acceptance rate for this group of applications is just over 30%. Clearly this is a very disappointing letter to receive, but there is another way to look at it. The admissions process is a long period of uncertainty, and the denial letter is the one decision that puts an end to that uncertainty, allowing the applicant to move on to Plan B. It is very difficult, but at least the suspense is over. If you get this letter, rest assured that you are in good company: there are many, many wonderful people in this group. We simply don’t have room for everyone, and we’re truly sorry we can’t offer more spaces to the many terrific students who apply to Colby.

Then there is the Accept letter. This is the one that the majority of applicants hope for, although by the time the decisions are finally made, we know there are a few students who actually hope that they’ll have fewer options. Several weeks ago I had an e-mail exchange with a student who admitted that he had already been accepted to 22 colleges. This is crazy! He has way too many choices. If you fall into this category, please let us know as soon as you’ve determined that Colby is not in your plans. We have a pool of great students on our waiting list who truly want to enroll here, and you’ll be doing them a favor by politely declining our offer of admission. (Please let us know where you intend to enroll, by the way. It’s very helpful to us.) On the other hand, we will be thrilled if you choose to come to Colby – congratulations!

The Wait List letter: first, a plea. If you are given a place on the wait list and you truly do not want it, please cut yourself loose. Staying on the wait list when you have no intention of attending Colby does a real disservice to those who would jump at the chance of attending if offered a place. Be kind to your fellow students and send back the card telling us, “Thanks but no thanks.” On the other hand, if you would seriously consider an offer from the wait list, do send back the card telling us so, or if you prefer you can write a letter to that effect, especially if you have some additional information to share that wasn’t available when you applied. Another helpful element would be a strong grade report at the end of the winter trimester or the third quarter, depending on your school’s grading schedule. Students on the wait list are not ranked in any kind of order, and we won’t be offering any additional acceptances until after May 1, when we have a firm idea of how the entering class is shaping up. Some years we have taken 20 or more students from the wait list, but other years we don’t use the wait list at all. Predicting enrollment is very tricky business, and the wait list allows us to bring well-qualified students to Colby in the event that our projections fall a bit short.

Finally, there is a rare letter offering admission to Colby at the beginning of the second semester, with the option of starting in the fall at our programs in either Dijon, France or Salamanca, Spain. This allows students to begin their college experience overseas, and to graduate in May, 2011 with the rest of their class. The small number of students offered this program have a level of proficiency in either French or Spanish, and have demonstrated in their applications that they have a sense of adventure and the ability to really benefit from this experience. Students find this to be perhaps the most confusing letter of all; some jump at the chance but many don’t know what to make of it! If you’re the recipient of this letter and want to discuss it, don’t hesitate to let us know.

This is a very long post, I know. No matter what your letter says, rest assured that we have paid very close attention to your application, and that we had very, very difficult decisions to make. But now I must sign off so that I can join the rest of the staff in the mail room to make sure those letters are ready to go out the door in a few hours!

Best of luck to you all – Dory

Next week: Crazy April

Overlapping Cycles

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 02:41:18 GMT

Among other things in the last two days, I’ve stuffed 250 Colby folders with various materials. Added to each of these in the next few days will be an individual letter of acceptance and, in many cases, a document describing a financial aid package. After multiple checks and double checks, the folder will be enclosed in a large envelope and put in the post office bins for pick-up next Wednesday. I figure that as of this writing, I’ve probably stuffed 20% of the folders going out to accepted students. Everybody is stuffing all kinds of information in other mailings and in files throughout Lunder House. As our Director emphasized in the staff meeting this morning, we’re all part of the effort to get the mail out the door just a week from today.

Meanwhile, it’s spring vacation for lots of schools around the country, and we’ve had a steady stream of visitors every day. There are a few seniors, but mostly it’s juniors and their families beginning the process. The kinds of questions raised in our information sessions tend to be more general than later in the cycle, and in every group of students and parents are members of both generations with that deer-in-the-headlights look. So I thought I might offer a few suggestions for the beginners.

First: at this point in the game, you’re just trying to get a sense of the place. So the most important thing you can do on a campus visit is keep your eyes and ears open. Listen during the information session, and hang onto every word that the tour guide says. Go to the bookstore, stroll to the athletic center, wander through “The Street,” and eat a meal in one of the dining halls. Listen to WMHB (89.7) as you drive into Waterville. Pick up a copy of The Echo to find out what’s on people’s minds. Don’t rush your visit, and don’t be afraid to split up: students and parents will pick up different impressions. One of the things we hear over and over again from our visitors is that they find Colby to be an incredibly friendly place. You will not regarded with disdain if you’re walking around by yourself.

Second: delve deeply into the website. There’s a ton of useful information on the Admissions page, of course, but you'll find loads more beyond that. Check out the Events Calendar. Look up an academic department and see what kind of research the professors do. Peruse the list of study abroad options. Figure out what kind of Jan Plan options were offered this year. Discover what COOT is. Learn about how we became the Mules.

Third: Sign up for our mailing list. It’s how we know you’re alive out there. (If you decide you don’t want to be on it any more, you can just let us know and we’ll remove you from the database.) Be sure to give us a reliable e-mail address, because we often use electronic means to tell students about something going on their area: field interviews by admissions staff members on the road; a reception or other special event nearby, etc.

Advice on those e-mail addresses: Make sure it’s your own address, not a parent’s account. Ditch the cute-sy middle school address in favor of something that won’t make people roll their eyes. And be sure to check your e-mail regularly.

Finally, don’t hesitate to ask questions, and lots of them.

Next week: Admit/Deny/Wait List/ Feb. Admit.

Now What?

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 01:05:57 GMT

In today’s staff meeting, the serious topic for discussion was the Colby Supplement to the Common Application. Those of you awaiting for the results of your application know what I’m talking about: it’s the additional information we ask beyond what’s in the Common Application and includes, among other things, two written responses. The first one: “Briefly discuss your reasons for applying to Colby.” The second is a Supplemental Essay that asks the student to choose one of five quotations and to write about it with respect to him- or herself. (You can get the exact wording elsewhere on the Admissions site.)

Suffice it to say that after each of us has read hundreds of applications throughout the winter, we have gotten a little tired of those quotations. Poker as a metaphor for life and “doing the thing you cannot do” have gotten a little old. So we spent a substantial amount of time this morning discussing the purpose of the Supplement, what we hope to gain from it, and most importantly, what we want to read about next winter.

The point of this little vignette is to let you know that when the reading winds down at Lunder, life barrels on: there is no rest for the weary in Admissions and Financial Aid. While most of us have cleared our desks of files to be read, others of us are still in discussion. The financial aid staff is barricaded in their offices at the moment; they aren’t able begin their work until the admissions decisions have been made, yet they must finish by the end of the month. So they are doing the most demanding work of the year compressed into a period of a few brutal weeks. In fact, our usually kind and considerate Financial Aid Director reminded us at staff meeting that we should forgive her if she should happen to bite off any heads in the next ten days or so.

Here’s what else is going on in Lunder: the administrative staff is working overtime to make sure that decisions are entered correctly in our database and the correct letter is in each student’s file. Downstairs in the mail room, Beth and her team of loyal student workers are printing addresses on small envelopes, and assembling the components that will be stuffed inside the big ones. In anticipation of hordes of visitors in April, our tour guide coordinator is working overtime to line up extra students to provide expert tours of our beautiful campus; our host coordinator is doing the same for hosting programs for accepted students. Three Open Houses are booked also during the month of April, and loads of arrangements are being made, including special panel discussions for students and parents, refreshments for our guests, and balloons to mark the way to Lunder House (see earlier post about Wayfinding). There are several receptions in the works for accepted students in other parts of the country, including Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver and others; venues must be reserved, food must be ordered, and attending staff must make their travel arrangements. Traffic is picking up again with spring breaks in progress at various schools bringing juniors and their families to Lunder, so the next cycle is starting before the last one is over.

You get the drift. We are not taking a break while we hold you in suspense over your decision. And once the letters are mailed, I’ll still be right here on the web, writing about whatever’s going on in Lunder world.

P.S. Every week I have a little fun picking out a photo to post in the blog. They’re all student photos that come from our weekly Student Lens project. Check it out: it’s a great way to get a glimpse of what’s been happening on campus. Here’s the link:

Decisions, Decisions

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 03:19:23 GMT

In theory, we are supposed to have finished all of our application reading responsibilities. In reality, there are still a few left to complete, but the big boxes in the back room are mostly empty now. The process shifts to committee and financial aid evaluation, a change of pace and the final push before we send the decision letters. www.insidecolby.com

So what opens these gates to some students, while others are left outside? How do we make those decisions?

First of all, there is a lot of material in each application. The process of matching all the pieces and getting them into the right folder is mostly done in the early weeks of January, but in truth, some credentials are inevitably misplaced (usually misfiled) or never arrive in the first place, so even at this late date we are still chasing a set of test scores here, a Colby Supplement there. Once the application is complete, it will be seen by at least three pairs of eyes. The first reader is someone who randomly chooses the file; the second reader is the staff member responsible for the geographic territory where the student’s school is located; and the third person is Parker Beverage, our Dean of Admissions, who will have seen all 4,677 first year applications before the letters are mailed.

Most of us read the file in a specific order, beginning with the application itself, the Colby Supplement, and the four student writing responses: the Meaningful Activity, the Personal Essay, the “Why Colby?,” and the Supplemental Essay. Then we go to the School Report, usually beginning with the counselor’s recommendation. Next, I always read the Teacher Recommendations, and finally I have a look at the academic record (transcript) and test scores.

We then arrive at two ratings for the applicant: one for academics and the other known as the personal rating. For academics, we look carefully at the breadth and rigor of courses selected by the student and the grades earned. This is where the SAT-I or ACT scores come in as well. The personal rating is based on how the student spends time outside of the classroom, particularly extracurricular activities and interests, jobs, summer experiences, family responsibilities, etc. Colby is a small, very active community, and we want to include students who have developed a variety of interests in and out of the classroom, and who like to be actively engaged in the life of the college, whether it’s involvement in one of the many musical ensembles, student government, athletics, publications, spiritual groups, or any number of other things.

Finally, taking all those factors into consideration, we arrive at one of several decisions. There are a number of applications that are clearly in one of two categories: admit or deny. Many, though, are not as clear. In those cases, we might recommend a place on the wait list, possibly a mid-year admit with the option of the first semester at our programs in France or Spain (see the blog entry entitled “Rounding Second and New Faces”), or something called Swim, which basically means that more information is needed before a decision is made. Of course the first two readers may not agree on the decision, and that is where the Admissions Committee and Dean Beverage come in. We all have our favorites, and it’s tough when one of those students is not offered admission. But the fact is that there are many more qualified students than we can accommodate, so the decisions are often very difficult. Frankly, it’s exhausting.

So now we’re nearing the end. The work that remains includes hammering out those difficult decisions, and then evaluating financial aid applications by our dedicated financial aid staff who are doing a HUGE amount of work right now.

Once those processes are complete, there are letters to print, proof-read and sign, envelopes to stuff, and postage to attach. Finally at the end of the month, our postman will back his truck up to the back door of Lunder House and we’ll help load the boxes, then applaud as he closes the door and drives away.

When the letter arrives, you can be sure that whether that envelope is thick or thin, a great deal of attention has been paid to your application by a lot of folks in Lunder House.

Wayfinding

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 02:35:36 GMT

Wikipedia says, “Wayfinding refers to the ways in which people and animals orient themselves in physical space and navigate from place to place.” The students in this photo are having a great time finding their way down the hill by the Chapel, one of Colby’s traditional sledding venues. At the end of this post, you’ll see some other students preparing for warmer times when they will be finding their way down white water rapids in little plastic boats. Such a variety of wayfinding and of things to learn at Colby College!

Over here in Lunder House, we’re still finding our way through all those applications. But there has been a shift in the atmosphere. It started last week during the annual February school break for many students in Maine and Massachusetts. This week, schools in Vermont and New Hampshire are on vacation. And so the focus and stillness of our reading have been interrupted with crowds of visiting students and their families. Some are applicants who are checking Colby out in winter months; one dad from Southern California told me that after his son decided to apply to Colby, he had to come to campus in February to see for himself what a Maine winter is all about. The majority of our visitors have been current juniors who are just starting the college process in earnest. It’s interesting to see both ends of the spectrum thrown together.

The hard part is switching gears. After two months of the solitary reading process, I found myself conducting an information session last Monday for a room full of 30 or so lively and expectant visitors. This is business-as-usual in late summer and on busy fall holiday weekends like Columbus Day, but I know I had a bit of the deer-in-the-headlights look during my session – I was completely out of practice. So there was a bit of wayfinding on my part as I tried to help our visitors get a sense about Colby.

Actually we feel fortunate that we’ve had so many visitors. The opening of the Diamond building on our side of Mayflower Hill Drive has complicated the task of finding Lunder House. For over a decade, ours was the only structure on the downhill side of the Drive, with a parking lot conveniently located directly in front of the building. With the advent of Colby Green, however, we’ve welcomed new neighbors and lots of changes to the landscape, some of which definitely complicate finding one’s way to Lunder. Diamond is so large that it completely obstructs Lunder for those visitors approaching from one end of Mayflower Hill; people can’t always figure out where they’re heading until after they’ve missed the entrance to the parking lot, which is now located behind our building. This is another point of confusion since it seems a bit counterintuitive not to enter by the door closest to the parking, but visitors who do so, rather than walking around on the path to the front door, get their first view of Lunder via the mail room.

The wayfinding challenges, we hope, will lessen with eventual changes to various signs: the ones identifying Lunder, where to park, and how to get into our building. Meanwhile, we’ll finish up reading applications as the number of visitors settles down a bit in March before the big rush in April. Good luck with your own wayfinding challenges!

International Diversions

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 22:09:39 GMT

The application reading continues. At this point, we’re all really looking forward to emerging at the end of this long, intense process, at least as much as our applicants are really looking forward to hearing from us.

To break up the solitary reading, I’ve been able to attend a few campus events that have taken me far away from this introspective process, figuratively at least. It started with the annual pot luck dinner for international students and their host families one Sunday evening. Food events, of course, are always popular since it’s fun to eat other people’s cooking. There was excellent cuisine from Asia, West Africa, Europe, Latin America, and North America, and of course it disappeared very, very quickly. My husband and I have been the host family for three years for Stijn Ortega Coppin ‘08, who grew up mostly in Peru but is actually a dual citizen of Belgium and Venezuela, and came to Colby from the United World College of the American West in New Mexico. It’s always good to spend some time with him.

Later on, we headed to Given Auditorium to watch the performance of the African Drumming Jan Plan course. This is quite an event. There were fifty students enrolled in the class this year under the amazing direction of Messan Jordan Benissan, a native of Togo who teaches in our music department. He manages to get everyone involved regardless of music background or comfort level in performing in front of an audience. Students dressed the part, wearing various items of African-inspired clothing, and when they weren’t drumming, they chanted and sang and danced. There was a huge amount of energy, and it was clear that everyone was having a good time. One of the students who works here in Lunder House, Katie Littleton ‘10, was part of the course and she told me later what a great experience the class had been, especially when all the students went to Benissan’s house for dinner. In a couple of decades, Katie may not remember specifically what courses she took from one semester to the next, but I’m pretty sure she’ll never forget African Drumming.

Another very cool event on campus last week was the daily creation of a sacred sand mandala, “The Wheel of Life,” by artist and former Buddhist monk Losang Samten at the Colby Art Museum. This is the second year that he has “built” an intricately detailed mandala from colored sand, and the crowds at the museum included Colby students and people from the community, fascinated by the on-going process. I visited on the last day before the mandala was dismantled in a ceremonial ritual, so the work was nearly complete. It was fascinating both for its symbols and the three dimensional quality of the sand – truly remarkable. Under the artist’s careful supervision, visitors were invited to take part in its construction as well as the dismantling ceremony. There were accompanying lectures on meditation and an artist’s talk and panel discussion. It was hugely popular, drawing returning visitors throughout the ten days.

So the reading process continues, but it’s great to come up for air in the rich atmosphere at Colby where a walk across campus reveals a glimpse of the big world beyond Lunder.

Valentine's Day Snow!

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 19:06:12 GMT

Whoopie! We finally got a real snowstorm! Although we have had some snow on the ground for about a month and we’ve seen plenty of cold temperatures in recent weeks, we hadn’t had a full-blown wind-whipped snowstorm all winter. Non-essential college personnel were sent home yesterday at 1:00 p.m. and the white stuff came down for most of the night. This morning we awoke to pristine whiteness and brilliant sunshine – so much light that sunglasses are a must. The wind packed the snow in drifts and banks with sculptural surface texture, and the birch tress and conifers break up the cloudless blue sky.

As for me, I didn’t venture out in the storm all day yesterday. In anticipation of the wintry weather, I left the office the day before armed with plenty of applications to read. I spent Valentine’s Day at home stoking the woodstove, watching the glorious snow coming down, and reading about the lives of students from Bombay to Bakersfield. We’re in Week 7 of the Reading Season, and while the intensity of reading all those applications is leaving some of us feeling a little ragged, there are always interesting bits that come to the surface as we open each folder. This year, for example, I’ve read two applications that included stories of the prospective students rescuing people from drowning. How does it feel to know that you’ve saved a life before you even hit your 18th birthday? Most applications don’t contain that kind of drama, but are no less interesting to read. I’ve come across a number of beautifully written tributes to family members: mothers, fathers, grandparents, even siblings. Bagpipers, curlers, music producers and beauty pageant winners mingle in the mounting pile at my feet with soccer players, yearbook editors, violinists and Big Brothers/Big Sisters. Looking out the window in front of me, chickadees fill up at the feeder; looking back down at the application on my desk, a tale unfolds of rebuilding efforts on the Gulf Coast. Every day that I read applications, I am reminded that there is a lot of talent spread out among high school students. Between the snow and the stories I encountered, yesterday was a very fine day.

There’s a sign on one of the chair lift towers at Sugarloaf noting that the snowiest months at that ski area are not December and January as one might think. This year, it came as a Valentine’s Day present.

Rounding Second and New Faces

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 17:09:17 GMT

Rounding Second and Some New Faces

Although baseball’s opening day is still a couple of months off, here in Lunder we have rounded second base and are heading for home: the official application reading season is more than half over. Just as baseball teams can fall into a slump that they overcome after the break for the All Star game, some of us are contending with our own slumps in the pace of our reading (I, for one, would be in that category). The Lunder equivalent of the All Star break is the New England College Board Regional Meeting coming up next week in Boston. I’m not going, although many of my colleagues will be there, participating in a variety of sessions focusing on trends in admissions, recruiting and financial aid. It revives enthusiasm for the work that we do in the short days of winter, and it’s always great to get together with colleagues from all over the region. I’ll be sticking around Colby, and with luck will be able to revive my reading pace on my own. The second half of everything always seems to go better than the first half. At least that’s what I’m hoping.

Meanwhile, it’s great to see students streaming across the street to come to classes in the newly opened Diamond building, the home of the Social Sciences. This field is very popular at Colby, so there is a steady flow of traffic all day long. The second semester is only a few days old, but things are in full swing in our new next-door neighbor.

Between classes on Monday, Nic Porot dropped by to say hello. Nic is new to Waterville but not new to Colby; he spent his first semester of college on our program in Dijon, France. I first met Nic in October, 2005 when I visited his high school, Loyola in Los Angeles, and he subsequently had an interview with me while I was in the area. This is particularly interesting since Nic’s home is actually in Idaho, but that’s another story. He was especially well suited to the Dijon program because of his family background: he has relatives in the Burgundy region and has spent a fair bit of time there in the past, so he has an edge in French language skills. [Although the minimum requirement for the program is two years of high school French, participating students come to Dijon with varied levels of skill.] Even so, Nic told me that his comfort level in French conversation soared over the months that he was in Dijon. He returned to the U.S. in mid-December with a semester’s worth of credit in French, History and Art History, as well as an amazing start to his college career. Nic wasn’t able to participate in the mid-year COOT program, but he learned to navigate Mayflower Hill while completing the Jan Plan photography class. He has covered a lot of ground geographically and intellectually since our paths crossed under the palm trees of Los Angeles, and it was great to see him. (That's Nic, wearing the gray jacket at the top of the photo, taken in Dijon this fall.)

I’m revived and ready to read!

Gen and Jan Plan

dstreett@colby.edu (Dory Streett) — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 20:08:14 GMT

With the end of Jan Plan yesterday, Lunder House has lost a staff member – sort of. We’ve been lucky for the last month in having a student, Genevieve Triganne, use her Jan Plan to serve as an intern in our office. Gen is a junior who is considering a career in admissions some day. She was no stranger to us, though, since she works for us during the regular academic year as well. In fact, if you’ve ever called our office, chances are good that she was the friendly and efficient voice at the other end of the line who answered your call.

In the summer, we hire a group of students to do a variety of things for us, including manning the reception desk, handling mailings, and most important of all, giving tours to the hordes of prospective students and their families who visit our beautiful campus. Gen spent the summer with us in ’06, and I’ve been reading about her in various applications this winter. In the section that asks applicants to describe their reasons for applying to Colby, Gen has been mentioned a number of times as being the student’s tour guide over the summer. Her enthusiasm and stories about her time at Colby have helped students picture themselves as a part of the College.

One of the greatest things about Gen is that she’s good at pretty much anything we ask her to do, and she’s saved us numerous times in Lunder. Need an extra tour guide at the last minute? She’ll do it. Swamped with data entry? She is a pro. 1,000 piece mailing that needs to go out tomorrow? Gen plugs in her iPod and gets the job done. She’s amazing.

But wait: there’s more! This History major came to us from Westminster School in Connecticut, but she’s one of Colby’s international students, hailing from Pointe-Claire, Quebec, just outside of Montreal. While she has spent Jan Plan learning about all facets of admissions at a liberal arts college, she’d actually like to work at a boarding school similar to Westminster, where she can also supervise a residence hall and act as a coach.

And here’s where Gen is perhaps best known on campus: in front of the net when the women’s hockey team takes the ice. A tri-captain this year, Gen has had some monumental games this year, including two that were back-to-back early in the season where she had 71 saves and was named NESCAC Women’s Hockey Player of the Week for her efforts. In the second of those games against Bowdoin, she had 21 saves in the third period and overtime, resulting in a 4-4 tie in a game where the Mules were out-shot by a 42-14 margin.

Here’s the good news: although Jan Plan is over and the students are on a short break before beginning the second semester next week, Gen’s not going anywhere. Her internship is over, but she’s still here, answering your calls, saving goals and saving the day.

Thanks Gen!